


leaving flatland

by murphysics



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Atlas CEO Rhys, Biting, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Edgeplay, I guess I'll just roll with it, Katagawa is so fucking thirsty for him it's gross, Katagawa's POV, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Maliwan, Maliwan is a Corporate Cult, Murder, Obsessive Behavior, Pre-Borderlands 3, Rhys is like ah, Stalking, Unreliable Narrator, Wordcount: Over 100.000, and soulcrushing fluff, because plot reasons, but nothing will be fine, they'll have a lot of sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26882473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murphysics/pseuds/murphysics
Summary: “I plan to start selling weapons in two weeks. Some new clients are shady about where this firepower will go, and— I can use some help from—”“A person who can dig into people’s dirty laundry,” Katagawa supplies, all helpful.Why not destroy Atlas to the ground and take what’s left? He’s not suited for this.“A person who is persistent and detail-oriented,” Rhys says with a smile./Or: Maliwan sends Katagawa, who stalked Rhys for five years, to go undercover in Atlas, and it ends the same: Katagawa murders his siblings, invades Promethea, and Rhys grows a mustache. Something probably relevant happens in-between.
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands) - implied - Relationship, Katagawa Jr./Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	1. first blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psycho_eye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psycho_eye/gifts).



> I started thinking about Katagawa's character in the past October and started writing about him in May. This fic got me outta depression and made me think about writing as of something good again, so that's nice (depression came back, but writing _is_ still nice. Who knew? Not me.) 
> 
> It's almost finished and I'll be (probably) releasing it as we edit it (me and wonderful @psycho_eye who bears with me and who was supposed to be the happy receiver of the birthday gift in August, but I'm late, so, hm.) 
> 
> _Flatland_ is a two-dimensional world from _Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions_ by Edwin A. Abbott. 
> 
> Now, to the niceties. **CW:** Murder, branding.

**4**

It is his fourth birthday. They enter the hall, and there is noise, different perfumes, and even a disco ball. 

**Be a part. Be safe. Protect your children.**

He reads the blue neon in passing, nods to Amaya and Naoko who stand near the wall, both engrossed in some videogame on the tablet, and pulls Takeshi’s t-shirt to get him closer to the tables with his favorite sparkling water with a watermelon taste. 

**We are the same, and it feels good.**

The crowd is whispering and he can’t grasp the meaning, because they’re talking in a language mom and Isaako started to teach him just recently. 

**United in service and peril, we expand.**

**Expansion is safety.**

This one is red. 

His father comes into the room when Takeshi starts messing up his hair, and it’s _annoying_ because he’s drinking at the moment, thank you very much. The crowd falls silent in the way he is familiar with and there are smiles on everyone's faces. He looks at beautiful dresses and precise lines of trousers, at different colorful shoes, notices the tension in everyone’s muscles. 

He just recently started training with his mother, and he remembers that it’s impossible to do any fighting well if you’re tense. In a conflict, you should be at peace, his mother said, and teased, “ _how can you be at peace if you have a face like that?_ ” He doesn’t know what is wrong with his face when he’s trying to win and Naoko, despite starting classes when he did, is somehow much better at the face thing, than he is. 

The next sign is about him (mostly.) 

**Dahl will die. Happy birthday to our 12th.**

Everyone tense and smiling when his father starts to talk with “good evening” and a round of applause that follows. Yuko explained that it's about his father’s special magic. People adore and love his warmth and presence (another term from the _dojo_ he can’t understand) he's a good person and he protects them. 

He doesn’t feel anything like warmth around his father, not like with Naoko (despite the fact she’s _mean),_ Takeshi, or Hana, — or mom. He thinks it has something to do with the fact they don’t talk, but Yuko says it’s because there’s a lot he doesn’t understand yet. Yet. He never argues. He wants to grow up so much. 

“I hope you’re enjoying each other's company,” his father says with a smile. There are few soft cheers from the crowd, and he smiles even more. “I’m very happy. So, special occasion, huh? Children grow fast. With Maliwan, I can’t keep up with a flow of time, sometimes, — I guess it’s great they are there to remind me—” 

His father stops and then calls him to come upon the scene. He puts a bottle on the table. Takeshi pats his nape, soft, but he almost doesn’t notice it. 

The path is too long, and all eyes are on him, happy, enchanted by father’s special magic. He comes up on the scene and bows to his father, then bows to the guests. They applaud again. He feels weird heat on his face, crippling onto his neck; his heart starts beating very fast, like when his mother and Souta ask him to stay in _gedan_ for as long as he can and his left knee starts to wobble. 

Father lays the cold hand on his neck, and he resists shivering. Father puts it on his left shoulder. He feels the soft fabric of his new blue shirt mother brought to him in the morning crumple, just a bit. Even though he knows she’s busy on the mission to protect them - and she left for two days, only - he wishes she was here. 

“—and here he is. To remind me of my mortality.” 

Sana explained to him once: everything that lives stops living; that’s mortality. He struggles to find a connection between words. 

“No leader will ever talk to you about his death,” his father continued, and the crowd falls silently than before. “Their greatest desire is to make those who work for us think they are invincible. To remind you of some generic gods, untouchable and powerful. To awe you, so you’d obey them and make sacrifices for them — just to get closer to perfection. From where I stand—” 

His father sighs as if disappointed. He's familiar with this disappointment. The grip on his shoulder becomes tougher. 

“—it’s a large pile of crap.” 

They laugh. He notices colorful sparkles on the cheeks of one of the women near the scene. He doesn’t know her name. She looks very cheerful and her eyes are shining. 

“Their leaders treat people like shit and tell them they’re special. Tell them they’re lucky to work for them.” his father takes a breath. “They deceive and they risk their employees and, in the end, they can’t be held accountable for their lies. Atlas threw their people on Pandora and left them. Dahl abandoned theirs, too, left them to rot, surrounded by their heavy machinery and Eridium poison. Some of you were among them. I don’t have to retell their lies.” 

He sees few people in the room start crying - in a way you cry like you’re hopeless to do what you need to. Last week, they were at the sea — mom and his siblings, all beside Isaako and Yuko (well they were the eldest, they have “things to do.”) He dreamt about getting lost in the market near the beach and screamed for them until his throat started hurting. He cried all morning then, not knowing how to make his chest not hurt, and hid it because Naoko always hid her tears and he wanted to be as strong as her. Mom found out, of course, and teased the answers out of him and said he’ll never get lost because there are people who love him and keep an eye on him and want him to be safe. 

He notices he’s crying right now, too, and sees a frown on Takeshi’s face - he’s worried. Amaya and Naoko stand near the wall and he barely sees them besides people. 

**Don’t fear death. Replaceability means**

**you continue to live as long as Maliwan lives,**

**you will be carried in our hearts and hands.**

**“** I don’t think you’re lucky. I think you were lied to and manipulated, and you want that to not happen again. As your leader, I think it’s my mission to ensure that. Dahl failed on Pandora, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try toying with Eridium mines again. We can’t allow them that. We can’t allow them to use more people - or to have this power, for what it’s worth. We can’t wait for them to make mistakes and screw it all up again. And I _know_ that, while I’ll work hard to destroy _everyone_ who threatens us _and_ the people who’re struggling out there— _”_ father tightens the hold on his shoulder more, just for a second, “I find solace in the fact that I, too, has an expiration date. You know, in death we’re probably not that tired? And I am, sometimes, long for the rest and quiet. Souta-kun, don’t—” 

Father laughs quietly, looking at Souta who is unrecognizable in his new suit. Both he and Sana look like they’re out of fashion journals Hana has told him about: all black lines and white shirts and grace. He isn’t allowed to read them yet, but he will.

“—you see? My children roll their eyes at me wanting to rest because they’ve never seen me not working. Fair, but it’s a price I have to pay to protect all of you. But when I die, yes, I know you will be safe. Because I am replaceable, too. With my children, who, I'm sure,” father slips his cold palm through his hair and he doesn’t close his eyes, “— will defend what I’ve built.” 

The crowd cheers and he wants to raise his head to see where his father is looking, but can’t move. When the applause dies down, the hand disappears from his hair and he feels giddy. 

“Now, I know some of you want revenge,” his father says and waves his hand. “We have Dahl CTO here. Jim Corney. Hard-working fellow and a clinical liar. Alice,” he turns to one of the sobbing women near the scene. “Come up here, will you?” 

She does, smiling with a watery smile. His father gives her a big gun. Jim Corney waves on his legs, unsteady and silent. 

“You can change your mind,” his father says carefully, gently. His palm on Alice’s elbow seems not as tough as it was on his shoulder. 

“No,” she says, voice hoarse. “I can do it.” 

*

Here’s what he remembers the most. 

The smell of blood and burning flesh - Maliwan’s bullet and a wave of fire damage.

Trembling in Alice Williams’ hands, the wet on her blouse from when she couldn’t get hold of her glass with champagne. (Jim Corney stole her mockups for guns, Katagawa will find out later, and let them in production without crediting her - and then cleaned her bank account after she’s tried to go public with them. She was left on Pandora for one and a half years, without physical skills to protect herself and means for survival. Yuko and mom found her there.) 

Jim Corney’s heavy, dead weight falling on the scene - thud, and down the scene - thud, and the cleaner robots rolling their wheels to pick him up. Mortality. 

The smell of his _own_ flesh, boiling pain, blind and hot like a wall of tears behind his eyelids that made him sharp, and thin, and immobile; a resolution to his anticipation and waiting and jealous glances on Naoko’s neck. 

His long-awaited number. Soon, it will scar and, after the removal of the texture of the scar, they will cover it with ink. 

The form of a smile on his lips, salt of blood in his mouth, his excited happiness of wishes that come true. 

The absence of any warmth beside the burn.


	2. flags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been so long since Katagawa put an effort into consciously memorizing something; his neurons fire off, building new pathways, like lights turning on in the forgotten, fogged city. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, so here's the first chapter. The small one. (Sobs) 
> 
> **CW:** stalking, obsessive behaviour, employee-boss relationships, blowjobs, fingering, edging, light dom/sub dynamics, masturbation, sadism, cock blocking, and I guess praise kink. 
> 
> Additional spoilery CWs is in the end notes. Please check them out!

_I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in._  
 _I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful._  
Hala Alyan, "Spoiler"

**24**

It’s a young Hyperion data scientist who destroys Helios in the end, and he’s drawn to him immediately: the visible exhaustion in his shoulders, a gold circle of his left eye, the soft line of his lips. 

He sits there, watching a presentation of what Maliwan’s cyber intelligence team has managed to get from the dying systems of Hyperion base: several hundred employees files, old versions from a cracked back-up server; few weapon prototypes that have never seen production. A reason for the fall: power shutdown. A reason for a fall, on tape: a tired pale man, cybernetic prosthesis lying beside him among the shuttered remains of Handsome Jack’s heritage. Dust around him has barely settled, obstructing the vision. 

He’s never cared to wait for Hyperion’s death; never expected it to look like that. His second death, if you’ll think about it. 

Nails dig into the hardened calluses on his palm, and he barely feels them, his mind swirling around the name.

 _Rhys_ , he tries in the drowsy silence of his mind. A weird, distant admiration surges through his mind, the name revibrates through the quiet, closed chambers. He didn’t think movies like that are still made. 

_Rhys_ , he thinks again, tasting a smile forming inside of his mouth, faint and private; evidence of his curiosity. 

_That’s how you kill titans._

Rhys doesn’t notice his bombs, brushes off explosions they make around him, worrying the desert; doesn’t notice his gunmen, or spyflies, or any presence at all. 

Katagawa wants his focus, and the only proper way to do it is to become a target, but—there are other ways, he figures. 

Rhys doesn’t enjoy weapons. He doesn’t know where to aim or doesn’t care to look. There is no one around to make him. 

_Okay_ , Katagawa thinks and begins his research. 

He’s not demanding. Sometimes, watching is enough. 

**25**

Rhys is exhausted, almost friendless, and — guilty, Katagawa knows after almost a year of seeing him look up to get an uninterrupted view on Elpis. Knuckles, whitened from tension, tired eyes finding a clear shot. 

His girl, and then not his girl, Sasha, leaves him with a conversation Katagawa doesn’t listen to. When it’s over, Rhys doesn’t seem upset, although afterwards his sleep shortens to four hours a day and his body gains more nervous, frantic edges. Seeing his hands fly over the keyboard of the outdated workstation, Katagawa figures the breakup was another addition to his bag of self-defeating efforts. 

He doesn’t _always_ watch him. He has work to do, deals to make or facilitate. He has dinners with some of his siblings and conference feasts; Maliwan always has causes to celebrate, and they have multiplied after Helios’ fall, after Hyperion’s leftovers relocated to the farthest end of the sixth system. 

Sometimes, Rhys’ body slows, like he’s submerged in the hot bath, his nimble movements become smoother, almost languid, and if the spyfly on the edge of his window is advanced enough, Katagawa can see the waves on the red line tightening as Rhys’ pulse goes faster. That, he doesn’t watch, too. He withdraws the bugs and lies down, all of him squeezing in a dry, heated hunger, mind focused on the picture of a neon blue that licks over the open skin of Rhys’ neck, ink and all. 

He never bothers to do something about it, wants that desire to stay, to fill him and warm him and be there. He likes hunger, bright and sharp. Mouthwatering. He stops taking stimulants to feel it closer; to feel it how it is; to feel more. 

His little droids circle Rhys’ shabby apartment, in a patternless movement. Rhys doesn’t notice them, not once. Katagawa has to manage the urge to go complacent. Dreams about continuity of constant surveillance. 

He doesn’t listen to his conversation with his friend but watches Rhys’ eyes wandering around, aimless, after their rare conversation, eyes red from rubbing. His friend’s name is Vaughn, and he lives a few meters apart. After their conversations, Rhys works more. 

When Rhys is alone, Katagawa often listens, learns the soundscape of his presence: curses and sighs and more curses; repetitive electronic beats from the earphones; keyboard noise; shower water. These moments, the want gets stronger, his mind overwhelmed with questions. How close should he get to hear his breathing? Is he loud? Does he swear? How does he sound like? 

Katagawa knows how Rhys’ sorrow and sadness sound. Finds, with a rustle of old paper, the voice of his duties, too; sees how he blurs himself with his code—and learns, superficially, how he codes, too. He wonders how Rhys is when he’s not this mild and quiet, filled to the brim with guilt. 

One time, when Rhys lets out the third groan in a row and leans on his back, eyes glowing with Elpis’ light, he watches him swallow a few times, cough, and squeeze his eyes so hard Katagawa’s sure there are explosions of phosphenes behind his eyelids. Would he see Rhys crying? Katagawa’s throat dries. 

Katagawa wants all of it, all of his hurt and guilt and stubbornness, and it’s core-wrenching, disorienting for a simple hyperfixation, but still familiar, comforting even; it’s been a few years since the last time he had something to obsess over: the fact it’s a person, not a language or application of LFZ to Eridium shouldn’t make the difference. It passes. 

Rhys doesn’t cry. He opens his eyes and continues to look at Elpis, head upside-down, hands holding a laptop on his knees. Katagawa turns away from him. 

Wanting connection is another story. He reads about stalking, like fitting himself in the boxes would make something clear. Everything’s clear enough; he’s already living in it. He disregards the red flag. 

He observes, a stranger in his own head, the space his brain created to fit all the facts about Rhys, his little quirks and habits. 

In a good mood, Rhys drinks shitty coffee: black, two sugars, milk when something extra has happened before. Something extra is: finishing an applied cybersecurity course for six months instead of a year and a half. He rubs his nose when something puzzles him, says _ugh, come on_ when he notices something could have been optimized, but hasn’t been (in his code, in open-source frameworks and SDKs he’s using, in—everywhere). Runs, on average, 25-minutes showers. Drinks pills for the headaches only after frowning at the screen and tapping his temples for at least two hours. Leaves the earphones playing music on the table and forgets about them. Almost always works with an instant compiler and saves his progress every half-an-hour. 

It’s been so long since Katagawa put an effort into consciously memorizing something; his neurons fire off, building new pathways, like lights turning on in the forgotten, fogged city. 

He loses edges of himself on these newly illuminated streets, blends into a lense, a camera, some other thing whose only purpose is to track Rhys’ movements, watch him, study him: the line his hand makes in the air of his room, neon-shiny with screens and holograms with architectural blueprints; the chain of swears at the code; the arch of his tense body when he stretches his tired back. The way he shuffles meds in the bottle, speaks with construction workers, turning abandoned Atlas’ building on Promethea into new headquarters. It’s good to be this thing. It’s probably the best out of all things he has been.

___________

**2SNEWS. ATLAS RESTARTS OPERATIONS**

According to the press-release on Atlas R&D’s netsite that went live in about 1330 of 12/05/2873, Atlas restarts operation with 28-year-old Rhys Strongfork as a new CEO. 

We couldn’t reach Rhys Strongfork for a comment and were unable to identify groups that helped him with the renovation of Promethea. According to his profile on Unbubble, the past two years he’s been doing the same work Atlas plans to do now: working as a security engineer and data scientist with SMEs and startups. 

Atlas’ new offerings include protective equipment and software development services with a major focus on cybersecurity and data science. 

We’ve been expecting the news for some time, as multiple sources confirmed seeing semi-terraformation and construction on Promethea, where abandoned Atlas’ facilities were a well-known target for treasure and tech-hunter raids. 

Previously, Handsome Jack claimed to destroy Atlas’ military force and operations, and these words have been a basis of speculations about his involvement in the collapse of Crimson Lance and death of their commanding officers (who are, according to  some sources, not dead at all—and will be brought together by the new boss of Atlas’ corporation.) 

___________

**[VIDEO] Helios Lives #51. New CEO of Atlas is Rhys The Hyperion’s Man: Real Story of Helios Fall [35:48]**

**Comments**

**straightbestfriend** _4 minutes ago_   
if you guys really plan to do it, i highly recommend  CoV’s services. they might even do it live!!

 **Erika** _4 minutes ago_  
Thank you for the story, guys. I’ve heard something about what happened on Helios, but this is… this is terrible. Thank you for sharing. 

**likemoxxy** _4 minutes ago_   
Oh for fuck’s sake WHEN will you shut UP 

**plausible** _5 minutes_  
I respect you

 **funishad** _6 minutes ago_  
Remember the countdown that has been created years ago? Days without corporate war? I think we need to dig it up - itsb een too long since the last time we were fucked by capitalist tyrant 

**moonsmile** _10 minutes ago_  
how much until the new century, i don’t like this one 

**ssss** _12 minutes ago_  
i kinda feel confused   
arent both of you from hyperion too? if he’s so cruel why did *you* survive?

 **yudontknow** _13 minutes ago_  
both of you are so hot 

**derrida_is_wrong** _13 minutes ago_  
i didn’t think i can pity helios folks but here i am 

___________

**26**

It goes on - watching, list-filling, more watching. More facts. He knows more: Rhys is a good negotiator and project manager, and to the end of the eighth month of 2873, the stella of headquarters and the first apartment two complexes, attached to it, start filling up with people; Rhys eats only fast food and takeaways and never cooks; Rhys pilots; Rhys makes a large entrepreneurial attraction out of Promethea. 

Rhys is lonely. 

Once, Katagawa takes care of especially noisy acquisition and, unexpectedly, there’s a transportation issue on Dionysus and he misses Rhys’ week due to it. He looks at the blood on his sword. The numbness crawls into him like an old friend, settles on the bottom of his stomach in the assurance of safety and satiation. There’s nothing except this — and then there’s something else. After arrival on the M, he sees Rhys going to Promethea’s Anemoi, a fancy bar and a hotel at once. 

Earlier, it was a meetup place for adventurers, but now they’ve lightened up, expecting new clientele—and here he is, looking more lonely than ever. Something else flickers at the shadow under his eyes, the clench of his jaw. Katagawa wants to know, wants to feel all these things closer, to touch the painting: all his edges and dips and sighs. 

So he goes. 

Curiosity, he tells himself, listening to the word on the loop, when he watches Rhys order the fanciest blue-and-pink sweet monstrosity and flirt, apologetically and a bit awkwardly with a bartender, a black shirt and a smile with a faint brush of exhaustion, friendly neighbor workaholic, airy jokes and lips sucking on the metal tube. Katagawa can’t help but wonder about parallels: maybe in some universe, _he_ is behind that counter, meeting Rhys’ compensatory identity. 

He sits near Rhys after his third and is faced with remarkably sober eyes, sober brown and sober-almost-white - that's a new cyberware, one of the mysteries Katagawa couldn’t peek into, wasn’t there when Rhys finished working on them. 

"Hi," Rhys says, and his soft voice contradicts his eyes. "Nice heels." 

"I know," Katagawa smiles. Rhys' eyes flicker on his face. "Want to take a walk?" 

When his back hits the door of the hotel room Rhys' staying in, Katagawa thinks he didn’t think it through. Сybernetic fingers dig into the patch on his nape and tug him to Rhys' mouth, and he moans there, loudly, startled and overwhelmed, first contact cracking his shell open, exposing raw meat of his insides. 

It's nowhere that dramatic, of course, but it feels like that. So much for noticing. Katagawa feels trembling in his chest, his stomach, bathing in relief of being seen and anger of the lacking individualism. 

He resolves to make it as personal as possible for himself, his little, quiet moments of reverence: in the dip between Rhys’ collarbones, near his ankle, in the sharp hollow of his hipbone. He tries not to meet Rhys' eyes, keeps his affection on the fine line between anonymous and intrusive. 

When Rhys throws his head and closes his eyes and Katagawa takes him into his mouth, he snaps, stuffing the groan by pulling Rhys' ass closer, getting his cock deeper into his throat to muffle himself, because there's no way someone concludes he didn't _wait_ for a long time to taste him after hearing his sound. 

*****

Stalking it is, Katagawa admits watching Rhys remaking Atlas’ bloodthirst into something else, new and weird and fragile. He laughs at the phallic symbol of the headquarters building and misses seeing Rhys through the glass as its windows are painted with reflector. Apartment complexes and manufacturing facilities rise up, and buildings around them house more and more new people as Rhys makes deals with other businesses to expand to Promethea. 

The reports start flooding the Network after another half of year: the plan for Pandora’s revival is announced. 

Katagawa thinks Rhys is stupid and idealistic and hot-blooded for even thinking it can work and he can live through it. Media starts calling him young Atlas. 

Katagawa sees Rhys hire terraforming experts and send them to Pandora. Sees Sasha greets them and shows them around, still a partner in need, even though they barely talk to each other. One of the specialists calls Rhys “nice” in a surprised, fond tone, and Katagawa recalls a quiet morning in neon, black-and-blue lines of Rhys’ long body, the breathing pattern of delta sleep. Remembers the bruises in the mirror, an uneven puncture line from under his jaw to the edge of his shoulder, where Rhys has bitten when he came for the second time and agrees with them. 

He agrees with them, startled with his ability to call _anyone_ nice. He also thinks, looking at the team preparing the first area for transformation, that Rhys doesn’t look scared. He wonders how he manages it. How he keeps moving, operating within a bundle of uncertainty and danger, despite everything screaming in his face not to. Rhys’ determination to wish for things and move to them is admirable, daring even, but Katagawa knows that it will shatter him. 

Perhaps it's because it’s been a long time since Katagawa saw any point of interest in actions. 

He has a weird desire to trace a side of Rhys’ jaw with his fingers, even on the picture. It’s a hologram. It’s impossible. 

He wants it to stop, so he stops it, putting the man into his schedule. 

___________

**Business Hour for Eden System, ESA Radio Show.**

**4M2874, Eden-8 — Rhys Strongfork, Jenna Vaudry: Everything You Need to Know About New Atlas**

**MABETT** : Hi, I’m Deborah Mabett, and today we have Rhys Strongfork, new CEO of Atlas, and Jenna Vaudry, head of Atlas’ business development department. Thank you for joining us. 

**STRONGFORK** : Thank you for having us, Deborah. 

**VAUDRY** : Good morning. Good morning, Eden! God, it’s been so long since I’ve been in this system. 

**M** : Really, where are you from? 

**V** : Themis, but I’ve read courses on Edens universities about the history of the development of small and medium businesses after the Melting. 

**M** : Ah, probably studied there, too? 

**V** : No. [laughs] No, I don’t have a degree. 

**M** : Cool! I mean -- yeah. So. Mr Strongfork… 

**S** : Please, call me Rhys. 

**M** : Rhys. I’ll start with the question everyone’s asking. How did you become the CEO of Atlas? 

**S** : I’ve found Atlas’ deeds in one of Hyperion’s offices. 

**M** : They were just... lying around there for anyone to take? 

**S** : Yeah, you could say that. 

**M** : Did you do it before or after you’ve initiated emergency power shut down? 

**S** : Before. 

**M** : We heard two opinions on that from people who survived the fall. There has been a cult that said you were their saviour. There are also lots of people who think that was a competitor elimination strategy. Can you comment on that? 

**S** : Yeah, I’m -- familiar with both thoughts. What happened on Helios was a large-scale security breach, and it has been more dangerous for Hyperion employees to let it happen than to evacuate everyone and turn all the systems off. 

**M** : A lot of people died. Do you think you’re responsible for their deaths? 

**S** : I am responsible for their deaths. 

**M** : Are you in contact with their close ones? 

**S** : With those of them who are willing to talk to me, yes. 

**M** : Okay. You’re the first CEO of a major corporation who’s agreed to do an interview with an independent media. Why? 

**S** : Mainly, because of the questions like you’ve asked me before. The head of my Marketing and PR department said we shouldn’t attempt to participate in the narrative from the inside of Atlas, so -- here I am. 

**M** : Participate, not change? 

**V:** Yeah. We want to tell stories about what we’re doing in Atlas, too, - along with critics, haters, old Atlas’ fans, old Atlas’ enemies, old folks from Hyperion and others. 

**M** : Okay, soo. Tell me how Atlas works now. What are you doing? 

**V** : Right now, Atlas is a small full-cycle security company. We release protective gear and provide cybersecurity services for businesses and stand-alone customers. 

**M** : Are you planning to come back to weapon manufacturing? 

**V** : We are, but not right now. Right now, we’re more focused on attracting independent businesses to Promethea, so, you know, more people came to live there. 

**M** : I heard eleven - or twelve ventures are already working there alongside Atlas. Are you working as an incubator for them? 

**V** : Well, no. All of these ventures planned to start interplanetary operations, so we offered them a credit to settle and launch on Promethea, - and they came.

 **M** : Just like that? For a credit line? 

**V** : Yeah, they can pay it off in the nearest three years - partially, or however they want. 

**M** : This is… very promising and very weird at the same time. What will you have from that? Do you also invest in them? 

**V** : No, no. [laughs] We don’t take equity. The explanation will be a bit long and juuust a bit self-promotional. Do you want to hear it? 

**M** : Do your worst. 

**V** : We don’t take equity because we think monopolies and the state of the global market as it exists now.. suck? One of the most common - hm, unspoken laws? - that has been active on my home planet was not to grow too much, because if you became visibly profitable, Hyperion, or Maliwan, or Atlas, or Dahl, or- some large corporate machine, will come to you and offer you a deal. Everybody has been doing it, everybody. And it is very hard to refuse such deals, - not always because people threaten you, but because exit gives you money to live without a worry for a lifetime. Don’t take me wrong, it’s a good thing. The issue here is that the market picture didn’t change for a hundred years and the big corporations have too much power and can’t, as you said, be held accountable for what they do. 

**M** : You think the solution is more companies? 

**V** : I think that’s a part of the solution. More different people that lead different businesses that do different things. Less unification and dependency and maybe, eventually, less fear. We provide different services for leadership and business development for the ventures that are already on Promethea if they want them, we give them security and cybersecurity safeguards, and all we hope for is that they’ll be doing cool things and grow, with or without us. 

**M** : Ambitious. Is that Promethea-only option? 

**S** : Huh, actually, no. I started providing cybersecurity services remotely, for different businesses, - back when I still lived on Pandora. Right now, we’re doing it, too. And if a company wants to be a part of that ecosystem, they can contact us from anywhere in the six systems, but right now there’s not much of them. People who run companies on Promethea agreed because for them it was market expansion - we’re helping them navigate it for a low cost and they, just by doing their thing, help us change Promethea. 

**M** : Right now, if you’ll start manufacturing weapons, your major competitor will be Maliwan, and there’s literally nothing known about its C-board or way of working, except for the fact they’ve participated in every corporate war. 

**V** : Profited from every corporate war, you mean. 

**M** : That, too. How do you plan to get through the potential conflicts? 

**S** : I mean, you can also say that we’re trying to grab part of Anshin’s market share, but you don’t ask how we are planning to deal with them. 

**V** : You see, that’s the problem with the way stories about running a business in six galaxies are constructed. There has been - and there are known extraordinary destructive agents everyone is aware of, and everyone operates in the coordinate system they’ve created. Some of them are visible, some of them are not, but everyone feels their weight, and every story, sooner or later, becomes a story about them. We want to change that. Anshin is not part of that story, because Miss Kuramoto actively refuses to engage with the current predicament. We think there should be more companies that are capable of doing that. 

**S** : As for potential conflicts -- of course we anticipate them, and of course I’m scared. I know that and my colleagues know that. But I think fear is just a side effect from expecting a confrontation that can bring a lot of trouble - but troubles are not ultimate and inevitable. I refuse to acknowledge them as such.

 **V** : What Rhys is trying to say is that - we’ll prepare for them.

 **M** : Right. Please, tell us more about Atlas’ employees’ workdays… 

___________

**27**

Months go and go, and twice within each, he watches records with Rhys. Sometimes it’s a silent corporate movie: Rhys sitting in the freshly opened cafe, a horrendous drink with whipped cream near the laptop, his hands flying above it. Sometimes, it’s an instance when Rhys puts on a mask of an easy fool in negotiations with Kincaid: his tie tucked into his trousers and every third phrase is a self-deprecating joke. Katagawa notices that his smile tries to mirror Rhys’ when Rhys leaves the man’s shop. A dangerous, smug thing hiding in the line of his mouth. 

They both know about the Q-system and its bullets; about protective fields, pre-installed or already installed on Promethea; about Atlas’ shields that already feel the soft market pull of pre-orders. Kincaid is up for some surprise, and it’s going to be _hilarious_. Katagawa shivers to the thought, ignoring endless lines of red flags swirling before his eyes. 

It’s an instance when Rhys goes by himself to Eridium mines, calm and unafraid and _not weary._ Katagawa thinks it’s the first time he sees Rhys so serene: a paradox, walking, all sweaty, under the merciless desert sky, Rhys’ lips moving for short requests to, apparently, his new voice assistant. He watches him build walls around mines afterwards. 

There are lots of red flags, but instead of watching them, Katagawa watches Rhys, convincing himself it’s a healthy, regulated consumption of comfort content. 

Atlas makes the first five hundred deals selling protective equipment. Rhys gives away dozens of kits to founders who agreed to work in the first startup node on Pandora. He makes a talk showcasing AI-driven sniper bullets from the Q lineup that can change trajectory. Investors he’s invited are shocked and Kincaid drinks long ice lands in the corner and giggles. Rhys doesn't ask them for money. This is pure, unapologetic showing off.

They applaud. Katagawa marks the first year of the schedule and thinks: _that's how the Titans are reborn._

That’s also when Maliwan notices Rhys, and Katagawa is pulled out from the soothing numbness that fills everything except the days of watching. He thinks nothing that poetic. 

He thinks: _no_. 

**28**

He stands in front of the Atlas’ CEO, Rhys _Strongfork_ \- for gods’ sake, - and the image of a tired pale man who has just shut the last remains of Handsome Jack consciousness forever and buried it in the desert; his black shirt hovers before and a circle of golden iris blurs in front of his eyes as he tries to blink the distraction away. 

He’s the sixth person Rhys has interviewed today—or, more like facilitated the onboarding of. He’s already had two blind interviews and now Rhys looked at his file, asked questions about chemistry ( _didn’t like the lab robe_ , Katagawa blurts out, and Rhys laughs without looking up from the hologram), previous projects (Rhys doesn’t ask for names of the companies, so Katagawa retells the cases he’s worked on in University—and cases he could have completed without bloodshed, but hasn’t; small things. Rhys nods, rubbing his eyes), and— safety. On the safety question, Rhys looks up at him, shoulders crumpled with exhaustion under a navy jumper, bags under different-coloured eyes — Katagawa feels his pulse go up, just a tiny bit. 

“I say it to everyone—employment here will likely be dangerous. We’re doing everything in our powers to increase defences and prevent—” Rhys takes a breath and makes a gesture in the air. Is he thinner since Katagawa’s last saw him or is the jumper is oversized? 

“—bad things,” Katagawa offers with a nod. 

“—bad things,” Rhys agrees. “I just want to make sure you’ll make an informed decision: there are threats, there are a lot of them. Sooner or later, people will make their move.” 

“I read the Network,” Katagawa says quickly, to refrain from dropping his voice down. “I’m aware of the possibility.” 

“And what do you think?” Rhys asks. His posture is open, inviting. This is a serious talk. Business talk. Katagawa thinks it’s the only moment in their conversation where Rhys is fully present: he has the boss-like, attentive, active listening feeling around him. He wonders how hard he wants to fold his palms around the cup of hot shitty coffee near him. It’s cold on Promethea nowadays. He knows what people answer to this—nowadays they share their onboarding experience on social platforms. He knew it will be asked. 

His father wants everything Rhys is destroyed, and everything he has - taken away, including his company, deals, and the key to the Vault of the Traveller, and his twelfth child is here to make it happen, using whatever means necessary. 

“I think I’m more curious than scared,” Katagawa replies neutrally. Rhys looks at him, long, and stands up to circle the table. Katagawa stands up, too. 

They shake hands. He counts seconds until Rhys lets go. "Welcome on board, Te-" 

"Katagawa," he interrupts with a small smile, "Katagawa is fine."

“Welcome on board, Katagawa.” 

*

 **AC4A19** is written on the door of his apartment. He closes it and sits on his suitcase. Touches a patch above the old burn, above old ink. Closes his eyes. 

_are u still in the trenches,_ he writes to Naoko. 

_i am,_ she writes back. _is brother alright?_

_i’m good,_ Katagawa replies, coming closer to the window. _i see the asteroid field from my window._

He looks at the dots appearing and indicating that Naoko is typing. A minute goes, then another. She’s on an undercover mission, too, he knows. She’s almost always on them, and he never knows where. It’s a familiar tug. 

_It must really satisfy your yearnings for poetic cinema, huh?_ Naoko finally says. 

_well, not exactly,_ Katagawa writes, feeling himself smiling. _but some of them, yes._

*

A corporate party happens a week after he’s assumed the position in market research, and Rhys is talking about individual contributions, and support, and community, and Katagawa, well-trained in autocracy, turns away to the wall and rolls his eyes. Rhys and his altruism, guilt, and saviour complex, Rhys and the 4/4 work days for his employees, Rhys and his speeches and his bright eyes of a person who is either overexcited or terribly insomniac. 

_Why haven’t you sat in your hole on Pandora silently_ , Katagawa asks the wall, hoping it will reflect the question to Rhys. _Is freelancing too good for you?_

He knows this is not the case. He wishes to be invisible like the patch on his nape. He isn’t, and it takes some time to persuade himself it’s a good thing, because Rhys moves to him, a small, barely visible discontent hidden in a curve of his brow. 

A good thing. All confidential documents aside, the only way for him to find out where the Vault Key is to get close to Rhys. It should start _somewhere._ Katagawa salutes him with a glass of Albariño and turns away to watch the crowd. Half of his team is here, Zhou Wei, a head of Marketing and PR, his boss, and Maria and Hannah Porter, a creative pair; he still hasn't asked if they’re relatives or they’re married or it’s a coincidence. 

“What do you think, first gathering and all?” Rhys asks, suddenly close, and Katagawa steadies himself not to flinch away when their shoulders almost touch. 

“I think, you’re very optimistic,” he offers, instead of compliments; good deception is 95% of truth or whatever they say, “and you care _a lot_. At least in speeches.” 

“I care outside of them, too.” Rhys looks at him from the corner of his almost-white eye and smiles sipping his whiskey. It’s a tired smile. 

In the middle of the hall, Hannah wraps a hand around Maria’s waist, and that hand slots in the curve of Maria’s spine when she’s leaning over it and hooks the leg over Hannah’s thigh. Maria shrieks with laughter. Hannah kisses her on the nose and gets them back into standing. Not relatives, then. It’s good when answers come so quickly, Katagawa thinks. He turns back to Rhys and his delusions about fixing the world. 

“I hope it will work,” he offers and sips his wine. 

“Well,” Rhys smiles some more without looking at him. Rumi Demar from the business development calls Porters to offer them martini. “All of us are here to make sure it will. You too,” Rhys turns to him and makes their glasses ding. Katagawa nods, biting on a smile, and trying not to breathe. His mind is a mess of feverish thoughts. He knows that perfume. “No way to succeed without sceptics.” 

Rhys leaves and Katagawa’s left standing near the wall, staring into Rhys’ back while he walks to where Zer0 tries to let somebody else win in beer ping-pong. The blood roars in his ears, a taste of Rhys’ neck smelling like a warmed wood near the ocean fills his mouth. He remembers smelling it on his own shoulders, eating it from his lips. He makes a large gulp, pleased to see his hands aren’t trembling. 

“Ah— Katagawa. How are you finding corporate benefits?” Zhou Wei asks, going closer to him, the black dots on her blouse swaying before his eyes. She’s shorter than him by maybe fifteen centimetres, and Katagawa regrets there are no chairs in the area. He shrugs into his wine in lieu of answering, the memory of Rhys’ taste still on his tongue. 

“I had this face, too,” Zhou Wei smiles. “All these entrepreneurial dreams about making things better, like— what’s the difference, exactly? Each one of them wants to make things better.” She sighs. 

“And?” Katagawa prompts. He knows Zhou Wei worked in Atlas almost since the beginning.

“And nothing. I’m still getting the feeling of it. But— Pour me a bit of this, will you?” Katagawa fills her glass with a Cabernet, cringing internally at her choice.“But— Everybody wants him to fuck up. Everybody. And running out of money is, like, the kindest path they predict him to take. And when he offered me a full-time — if you can call sixteen days a month work a full-time — I thought, whatever. At very least, it’s a well-paid job. And I always liked seeing old men getting unreasonable because of competition, so—” 

Katagawa smiles in his glass, glancing at her. “And no big dreams? No support of the community? No _contre nous de la tyrannie?”_

“I have a winery back home, what tyranny are you talking about?” Zhou Wei snorts. “I just— okay, fine, if there’s any chance he’ll succeed it will really be better for Hebe, too. But— I’m trying not to think about it. The job is _fun._ I mean, did you see a major corporation having fun? Now here, not at parties and events. In front of their workstations? No, they all are trapped in the circle between one salary and the next, whining about their life. I don’t whine about my life here. I’m enjoying it. Not like I’m enjoying it back at home, but still. I think it's worth something.” 

“It is,” Katagawa murmurs. “I’m sure he whines.” He nods at Rhys, already out of the beer-pong tour, and looking at Zer0 and a woman he doesn’t know competing for the first place. 

“Yeah, maybe under the covers in his room where no one sees. But that’s new, too, isn’t it?” Zhou Wei smiles and gets a hand on his forearm. “Try having fun.” 

“Sure,” Katagawa says and Zhou Wei rolls her eyes and gets to where Hannah sits under the wall, brows pinched in disgust, eyes on her tablet. Ah, the marketers. 

*

Katagawa starts overworking right on his second week, lying to himself that it’s because he wants to get closer to deals Atlas makes and, simultaneously, to Rhys, but it’s mostly the awareness of how rusty his brain is. The last time he tries to come up with the resolution of a business case has been _years_ ago. He gets frantic and “a little bit obsessive,” Porters comment when they find him scrolling through hundreds of customer interviews, sorted by the location of a sale. Protective equipment has been easy to sell even under the Atlas name—Rhys aligned them in price to the average cost of shields on the market and added temporary invisibility and enhanced protection from elemental damage to their properties. (Katagawa finds blueprints with Maliwan’s Shock arsenal when he studies Atlas’ product line. They are re-composed from the scratch— _almost_ correctly, nothing essential is wrong. He smiles.) 

They plan to start selling them in kits on planets of the second system, and that’s the main campaign they’re working on over the first month. Ten planets, ten localised communications. They spend hours arguing about positioning and tone of voice and slogan. Few times Rhys comes over and comes up with ideas like “what if we add “state-of-art” to the ads?” and Zhou Wei writes to Jenna Voudry and she comes with an urgent question about an upcoming instructional meeting with new startups on Promethea. 

Katagawa sits on the floor, surrounded by holograms, when Rhys stands up from his chairs and says, “I see what you’ve done here.” 

Zhou Wei lets out a laugh. “Of course you are, sweety. Now go.” 

When Rhys exits the room, Hannah, who lays on the floor, sends _ATLAS PROTECTS YOU WITH STATE OF ART TECH_ slogan in the air and adds _THAT CANNOT BE BARGAINED WITH_. 

Katagawa almost chokes on his coffee. Jon Bronstein sends a ball of red paper flying into Porter. “Stop it, see? Some of us are allergic to anarchism.” 

“I think we should run a test campaign. For the first one,” Katagawa says. They do, with a fake company name—on Themis, because Jenna joins, and their segment of the Network explodes in fear of Hyperion coming back from the ashes. They send results to Rhys and he writes, _thank you for disproving my creativity with evidence, folks._

 _Don’t worry about it, boss,_ Maria writes in the chat, _we’re always here for you and your wonderful ideas._

 _Where do I complain about bullying in the workplace?_ Rhys asks and adds a sad emoji. 

“We should have made a bet,” Jenna says dreamily. 

*

Katagawa gets elbows-deep into local issues of the second system, from Nemesis to Gaia, and, after three weeks, they come up with scenarios of forty campaigns. He’s the only person who works with two shifts in the department. Next month, creative materials are ready and approved by Rhys and Jenna, and he’s sitting on the chair and looks blankly in the ceiling. On five planets out of ten, the notion of protective gear being made by Atlas specifically takes about 10% of promotional content. On some of them, there's no mention of the brand at all.

Robert Clare, the designer from the second team, puts a bottle of shaoxing on his table. He recognizes the mark from his University days. 

“Zhou Wei took a week of vacation. Sent us a few bottles of this,” Robert smiles at him. He’s very good looking, ginger curls and oversized sweaters. There are dimples on his cheeks. “Also, miss Voudry wants to see you.” 

“Thanks,” Katagawa nods and goes to the BDD office, feeling Robert’s eyes between his shoulder blades. He really misses his sword. 

Jenna wants him in the BDD, which is understandable, considering their shortage, but still a bit surprising. He switches to being a business development specialist but still helps Zhou Wei with research if she asks. In-between meetings with startup founders, pitch competitions—now new companies want to get on Promethea _and_ Pandora and relentless market monitoring, Katagawa leaks the business to Maliwan. His partner, Kimberley Scott (“please call me Kim”), doesn’t believe he’s come here from Eden-8 to get some stable job after endless freelancing. Katagawa thinks it’s mainly because she’s never seen a human being going without sleep for 38 hours. 

Katagawa starts keeping tabs on her Network activity—it’s easy because even he can install a simple listener. Katagawa is an unknown surname, of course, Maliwan takes efforts to conceal the family standing behind its wheels, all contracts signed with third parties’ names. Maliwan’s C-board is ghosts and blood. There’s no way to connect him to it, but you can never be too careful. 

She tries to find his files, of course, and even calls his sister she founded in one of his profiles on _Unbabble_. It’s Naoko, and when they talk, Naoko pretends to be an owner of a car store on Eden-10 and Kim pretends to be his bank manager. He tries to call Naoko afterwards, but her line—her usual line, and the line they established for emergency communication—is dead. It doesn’t matter. He can’t come up with any messages, so he drops thinking about her. He hopes Kim’s suspicions won’t become a constant thing. 

He throws himself at studying the startups who applied for next pitch competition, wanting to become a part of the infrastructure, and he throws himself _deep_ enough to catch trails of uncomfortable truths _._ Jenna loses her chill for a few times, thinking he’s overly paranoid, he listens to a few lectures about unconscious risk aversion. They argue in the evenings, and Rumi, who comes to the office in the evening to paint because he can’t focus at home, shields himself with an easel, half-joking that both of them need to attend some anger management classes. 

The two weeks of endless snaps at each other end when he presents the evidence: a whole lineup of digital footprints of businesses who are involved in drug and data trades, mercenary killers, hacking groups, and thieves. 

“Well, fuck,” Jenna murmurs, looking at holograms. “How—” 

In her defence, he used spyflies for a few cases and accessed Maliwan’s database a few more.

“I hyperfixate,” Katagawa says. “It’s my hobby.” 

“I was wrong and I’m sorry,” Jenna says, looking at him with a weird expression. Katagawa doesn’t like it, so he makes a vague gesture at her. 

“It’s not like we’ve already invited them and now we have to reject,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Jenna hums. “Do you want to— have a beer?” 

“You don’t have to feel bad about not trusting conjectures,” Katagawa replies and collects his stuff to go home. 

“No, I phrased this badly,” Jenna says and smiles at him widely. “Let’s drink.” 

*

Once, Katagawa tracks a startup claiming they can heal everything from Flash damage to amnesia to the Eridium drug market. Their slogan is _cutting-edge valetudinarian art to heal you HP,_ which is fun. When the BDD presents this case as an example of fraud among their future partners, Rhys is surprised. 

“Drugs. From Eridium. I don’t even...” Rhys says, disbelievingly, after Kim and Rumi leave the conference room.

Katagawa shrugs, thinking about the Nekrotafeyo production line and tests subjects bursting from the inside after half-an-hour of the greatest pleasure of their lives. Science Division 2 has been closed, but he knows some people left after the project—and it seems like they passed the knowledge further. 

“Well, that’s why we do background checks, right?” he says conversationally and opens a mini-hologram on his comm to see what’s next. He still can’t meet Rhys’ eyes properly - waves of possessiveness ache through his insides and squeeze his throat. He misses watching him. The illusion of connection has been much easier to sustain. Now, it’s— It’s just a lie he wants to be true. Inconvenient. 

“You _,”_ Rhys says. Katagawa turns his head, noticing a light, gentle curve of Rhys’ eyebrows. “You’ve started doing them that extensively. Jenna has been into research—but she says you took it to another level.” 

_No,_ Katagawa thinks, almost hysterical. _No, shut up._

“She exaggerates, and I just have lots of free time,” he smiles, shielding himself with hands and with a hologram stating he has a meeting with R&D about the second system’s customer’s behaviour studies they’ve done with Jon and Zhou Wei he wanted to show them. 

Rhys’ silent for a few moments and Katagawa takes it as his cue to leave, but then he says: 

“I plan to start selling weapons in two weeks. New clients are quite shady about where this firepower will go. And— I can use some help from—” 

“A person who can dig into people’s dirty laundry,” Katagawa supplies. 

Why not destroy Atlas to the ground and take what’s left? He’s not suited for this.

“A person who is persistent and detail-oriented,” Rhys says with a smile.“No pressure, of course. It can be dangerous. Zer0 isn’t always in the mood to help me with corporate chores, so… I don’t know. Think about it? If you don’t want to, it’s ok—” 

“I want to,” Katagawa interrupts, looking a few inches above the juncture between Rhys’ cybernetic hand and his frankly ridiculous vest. There’s a sunrise on Promethea, visible from the bulletproof floor-to-ceiling window of the conference room. 

“Awesome,” he smiles, and Katagawa’s focus momentarily shifts to wrinkles near his eyes. _I could kill you right now,_ he thinks, feeling saliva flooding his mouth. The image fills him with ferocious, warm satisfaction. How easily Rhys trusts. How easy it would be to break him.

Rhys comes closer and offers his hand and Katagawa shakes it. _But that’s not for me to take_ , _isn’t it?_

“That doesn’t mean I’m your PA, though—sceptics, remember? Business development just outsourced me because I'm an obsessive psycho,” he grins into Rhys’ laughing eyes as he nods. 

“You know, that’s exactly how Jenna described your approach.” 

The flagpoles are all bloody. 

*

They start working together. Usually, they go to clients via InstantTravel, but sometimes Rhys pilots and these are the worst days and Katagawa closes his eyes and talks nonsense at least until the jump because he can’t look at Rhys in the pilot chair. This is too close. 

If Zer0 comes along, he yawns and doesn’t speak. Katagawa understands. 

They have a routine that includes Katagawa relaying what he knows about the potential lead and showing a tail of a digital trail he managed to uncover. They don’t visit fraud ones, and often Katagawa watches Rhys writing a polite refusal in response, as they look at puppet companies of weapon re-sellers that have been caught up within all corporate wars during the last three decades, drug dealers who want Rhys as their supplier or distributor or whatever (they _adore_ Rhys; Katagawa theorizes it’s because he’s young and rich which is always a good combination for a lifetime megadeal), people who unhappy with what Atlas is doing and people Rhys doesn’t like because of his morals. 

Rhys, to his credit, doesn’t bother to respond to all of them.

A few years ago, Katagawa thought Rhys was delusional — he was fascinated but now, when they plan their business trips, it becomes apparent that Rhys is excruciatingly aware that he’s walking on the midfield. He doesn't know where the mines are, but oh he knows they exist, and he's getting ready for them. 

When Katagawa points out mines he didn't notice, working with him seems like the most futile job in the six systems: getting Rhys around the crappy buyers, potential kidnappers, and prankers, so he could throw him under another machine, in addition to the one that's already weighing on him, the one he has exited, the titan he's destroyed—and now carries everywhere. Sometimes, he wonders if Rhys misses it. 

He's constantly uncertain and is always coming up with new safeguards or other security projects, and Katagawa lets Maliwan into each one of them, already knowing there'll be a point where Takeshi and Amaya will have to stop and stare. Rhys likes to build cryptographic puzzles, and, despite them being incredibly efficient together, there are some rooms in this house no one will own. Katagawa saw him learn, but that has no utility function; there's a difference between seeing and watching, and he watched only Rhys, and, quite possibly, badly. He knows which t-shirt is Rhys' favourite (it's dark grey, with a half-erased print of a white warning sign and _BE CAREFUL. DATA SATURATION_ and it seems old; Katagawa can't blame him his most worn-out t-shirt from the university has been a crop top with a sign _IT'S SUCKS TO SUCK_ his roommate gave to him when he lost scholarship for the third time) and stuff like that but everything else is guesswork, and now he'll have to move past it. 

The first time they talk: Katagawa, trying not to blink too often into his coffee that tastes like shit, and Rhys, asking him if he can publish the research finding of a transportation company that really needed Atlas’ guns and bullets to protect their organ trade. 

“Sure,” Katagawa says, carefully measuring his inhales so the smell of Rhys’ winded out fresh, a bit citrusy perfume combined with his body heat that feels like _glow_ wouldn’t hit him in the head too much. It’s a casual one, as it seems, and it drives Katagawa mad. 

“You don’t care about it at all, do you?” Rhys asks, and Katagawa looks up at him. Morality check. Rhys doesn’t _glare,_ but there’s a rash tone underlining his voice that indicates a challenge. 

“What do you mean?” Katagawa prompts and makes a careful sip.

“They catch tourists out of the crowd and sell their organs,” Rhys says. 

“That’s what I said in the report,” Katagawa says. Rhys frowns. 

“And you are okay with that?” 

“If I were okay with that, would I show you the report?” Katagawa asks, tilting his head. 

“I don’t know,” Rhys says and continues to frown at him. “I think you’d show it anyway. Because it’s your job.” 

“Yeah,” Katagawa says and nods at the hologram. “These people are not this lucky.” 

Rhys continues to look at him and opens his mouth to say something, and then Katagawa’s comm rings and he’s off to the meeting with Jenna and founder of food shop participating in Promethean A-NODE. 

*

Rhys stops talking with him about morals but doesn’t stop talking in general, and Katagawa realizes things will have to change. He stops overworking and starts running and going to the gym in the mornings, hoping exercises will trample his rampant libido. He stops using the dishwasher and starts cooking just to do something with his time. He finds there’s no talking to Rhys if he didn’t jerk off before they meet and decides that dicks are the worst thing evolution came up with. He likes arousal, likes the urgent heat of it, the feeling of his skin getting sensitive, the feeling of his sharpened senses. He’s against the concept of masturbation to get rid of wanting. It’s a thing for pleasure. But. 

At one of these mornings, they’re in-between two meetings and about to travel to a potential and not really suspicious buyer, he stands under the hot shower and tries not to think about Rhys, just for a sport of it. 

He comes into his fist to the image of Rhys changing into his home clothes into his old room on Pandora, sharp lines of his tattoo darker in the twilight. It leaves him frantic. He puts the hand under the pouring water and thinks that, for all intents and purposes, with all his reports and analytics and constant information flowing back to his family, this doesn’t look like he’s doing his job well. 

*

One-purchase clients start calling Rhys to introduce him to some ballsy money-full investor or rusty old corporate man Katagawa doesn’t remember the name of but is already nauseated by. The word of mouth spreads and grows and the number of hot leads increases very fast. Katagawa marvels on how quickly people start to hope and sends reports back home. 

He also _tries (_ and fails, sometimes, by design) not to complain about Rhys’ style of self-sacrificing entrepreneurship when he’s ready to get into the well of acid if it means someone he could help is waiting on the bottom. His _we’re building a better place_ is really getting on Katagawa’s nerves. He’d hate to see Rhys die stupidly. 

Their special offer is very brief consulting: they can’t tell people Rhys doesn’t trust them to have his guns, so they worked as a tech person and a business person in quick, informative sessions on the improvements business can do to improve. _Improvements_ becomes an inside joke. Katagawa tries not to think how long has it been since the last time he had an inside joke with someone except Naoko. 

To fill up silences that feel like a constant bargain between restraint and watching the line of Rhys’ neck until his eyes burn, Katagawa starts talking about corporations’ business models, the work they’re doing in BDD, Atlas support and crediting/hosting efforts on Promethea and Pandora. They start discussing Promethean startups and large companies on the market. Rhys sings wax poetics to Anshin. Katagawa tells him about universities-backed startups in the Eden system. 

Katagawa notices Rhys almost never eats. Rhys notices Katagawa likes the movies from old Earth. 

Katagawa manages. He learns how to cook meals from the Caribbean and Filipino cuisines. He sends the list of highly secured Atlas-owned locations on Promethea, ranking them by the probability of finding the Vault Key inside. He doesn’t have any movement data, so he mostly operates on logic and his knowledge about Rhys’ habits. 

Winds are starting to blow on Promethea, and sometimes Katagawa thinks that flagpoles are reaching the blanket of the sky.

He starts to hate this sky and is shocked at this. 

*

“What a shithole,” he comments, when they’re passing through a rusted gate on Apate. The gate squeaks sympathetically. He hopes whoever decides to call their business Enter Price and locate it in the fifth system will be nice, decent people who really need protection from modified trash eaters or there’s _no_ way they’ll continue their happy entrepreneurial path. 

“Great way to greet our clients,” Rhys mutters, nodding at a flying camera near the old warehouse they’re heading into. 

“It’s not like they don’t know they live in a sh—” 

Rhys takes him by the sleeve, a soft bird-touch, and Katagawa looks at him. Rhys smiles. “Stop worrying. This isn’t an ambush by mad scientists. We’ll be fine.” 

“First of all, I didn’t tell you about _mad_ scientists. They are just scientists, period,” Katagawa shrugs Rhys’ hands away and looks at the cloud of air getting from his mouth. “Second of all, Zer0—” 

“—didn’t want to come and was right — God I _didn’t_ miss the winter,” Rhys shivers and huddles his jacket around himself. Katagawa turns away and looks at the sky. These people stole trash eater’s eggs from _Pandora_ and travelled here to set up their little biotransformation weapon lab. For all he cares, it’s enough reason to expect some sort of offence of The Creator (™) of Q-bullets. “Besides,” Rhys continues, as they get to the metallic door. “They don’t know about me here.” 

Katagawa snorts. “Buddy, all people with access to the Network know about you.”

“Stop calling me that,” Rhys says, exasperated. 

“I told you that’s how I cope with working with my boss, boss,” Rhys rolls his eyes and sighs. “So. Maybe they don't know the depths of your amazing inventive mind, but they know you’re a big deal. You’re the star of the show now. Everyone wants a piece.” 

“Is flirting a coping strategy, too?” 

Katagawa turns to give him his sweetest smile at him. “Yeah,” he replies and looks at the ironic curve of Rhys’ eyebrow. “So — don’t dismiss the risk management you’re paying me for with your impostor syndrome, will you?” 

They stop near the door. 

“Katagawa?” 

“Yes?” 

Working with him is such a wrenching fucking torture. Katagawa thinks even if he ran marathons every morning instead of five to ten kilometres, his sick mind would still find the strength to want him. It borders on new levels of insane. He delights in the desire; it terrifies him. He wants to get smaller to fit in his empty shoulder holster— _stubborn bastard_ —close to his heart. He wants to get into one of his pockets, to the juncture of his thigh, closer to the gentle and salty heat of him. He wants to crawl between his ribs and sleep there, listening to his blood rushing, to the beating of his heart. He wants to kill him. To pull him apart. To kiss him. He doesn't know what he wants. 

Rhys doesn't ask what he wants. Instead, he tells him: 

“Please, ring the doorbell.” 

And Katagawa does. 

*

There is no ambush, and everything goes exactly as planned. They return to the shuttle in silence that Katagawa can’t stand, and he talks about the latest article people who developed a terraforming technology used within the Pandorian bundle published in collaboration with an agriculture startup who participated in the last Atlas’ pitch competition. He thinks about unseen and unknowable things, ponders on his obsession, like this nudging helps it diffuse into something actually _helpful._

He thought he won’t be able to work like this, but he does—as a man from BDD who has a giant crush on his boss. It’s not viable in terms of his mission. Meanwhile, Amaya and Takeshi have been stopped by Rhys’ cryptographic puzzles; some rooms in this house can’t be owned by tech, at least now; how they can be owned... is a question Katagawa still tries to answer. He needs a solution. 

Rhys wasn't a data scientist then, standing in Hyperion’s ruins, Katagawa now knows; he was a middle-manager, and he tells different tale every time in his speeches of freedom, change, and healthy work environment. Katagawa’s sure: no one around him truly knows what happened. He wonders if Rhys enjoys it, the leadership, or if he punishes himself with it, loneliness squeezing him in a tight hug of decision exhaustion. He still, after five years, doesn’t look beaten by uncertainty—and Katagawa’s fascinat— 

“—can you send it to me? I wanna read,” Rhys’ voice comes, and Katagawa pulls away from his thoughts. He is fascinated, and it remains a problem, very much _not_ a solution. 

“What?” 

“Oh, I wish I could do that,” Rhys smiles, turning off the cloaking from the shuttle. His cheeks are rosy from the cold. Katagawa hates him. He let him go first, listening to his quiet requests to the shuttle’s AI to take a course on Promethea. When the door seals behind him, he asks: 

“Do what?” 

“Let my mouth do the talking and turn everything else off,” Rhys replies, moving to the coffee machine. It makes a loud noise turning on, Rhys pushes a few buttons, and Katagwa hears the sound of dry cream added to the drink. _Gods._

“Apologies,” Katagawa says, grinning, " _My_ mouth seems to handle everything better than the rest of me.” 

“That’s not what I remember,” Rhys says and puts another cup into the coffee machine. Katagawa tries his best not to freeze but freezes anyway. Good thing Rhys’ stands with his back to him. He manages not to lean into the nearest wall just to keep himself grounded. Rhys turns to him and smiles, flushed even more now that they’re out of the wind. “How do you take your coffee?” 

_I don’t know, but I know how you take yours_ , Katagawa thinks and the red flags are all melted into messy red liquid around him. 

“Black.” 

“Right… So,” Rhys gestures to the cockpit without looking at him. He takes both cups and waits until Katagawa clips his belt closed; puts the second coffee in the cup holder under the left handle of the co-pilot chair. Katagawa blinks not to look at his fingers near his palm. “I'm kinda puzzled here. Why didn’t you say anything?” 

Katagawa doesn’t know how to get close to Rhys, sure. But he knows how to push him away, with all of his good-natured attitude. He takes a sip of his coffee and waits until the shuttle takes off. 

“Just to be sure: the head of a corporation I’m working for asks me why didn’t I tell him that we had sex?” he asks, turning to Rhys and grinning at him. 

“Yes?” 

“I don’t know, I didn’t think it mattered,” he shrugs. ”Should I have put that in my CV? Increase my chances of getting on the train?” 

“No, of course, no,” and it is: a wall of loneliness losing transparency around Rhys who thought it would be a good idea to have heart to heart. Katagawa feels his blood boiling under the cold skin. “I just—” 

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to address this,” Katagawa says, mouthing on his coffee. “Didn’t want you to include that fact into your decisions. Didn’t want to deal with your decisions, based on it.” 

“I wouldn’t do that,” Rhys frowns. “I mean - I wouldn’t hire you just because we had sex.” 

“Yeah,” Katagawa leans closer to him and winks. “But you’re _thinking_ about it, so it affects you. I didn’t want that. So the real question is - when _did_ you remember? Did I get a job because I look good in heels? I’m not really good at reading people, so—”

Rhys laughs at that, loudly and briefly, like it’s been punched out of him, and it’s between disbelieving and tired. He looks at Katagawa for a long time, silent. 

“I was talking to Jenna, and she... Well, she’s come to me _infuriated_. Just batshit mad. Said some guy in BD won’t let good things pass through because they’re too suspicious. I think you didn’t have any evidence back then, just— well, I know it offends you but you just _assumed._ She was so _angry_. And— I’m deciding to look into you and remember that you’re the guy who switched to BDD recently and very quickly and, you know, I’m looking at your photo, and— God, I need to say it, right?” Rhys takes a deep breath. Katagawa weekly thinks that doesn’t look like a step back. “I had sex, like, two times? Over the last few years? And before that—” 

“I really don’t need to know, boss,” Katagawa interrupts, glad his voice doesn’t sound like he’s speaking with a handful of sand in his mouth because that’s how he feels. 

“—yeah, you got the idea. So. I kind of just _remembered_ .” Rhys shrugs and he’s visibly _flustered_ —oh this is going so _wrong,_ but it burns through Katagawa like a manic discharge, like all the memories he’s successfully held at bay coming back with a tide. “But I asked you to work toge—” 

“If you want to say that I work better than I fuck, I’ll be very, very sad,” he says and finishes his coffee in three large gulps. 

Rhys _gasps_. For fuck’s sake. “I want to say that—” 

“ _Rhys_ ,” Katagawa says, and it marks the second time he called him by his name. He thought the first has been bad — but it’s worse, a thrilling, ferocious thing. Fear-naming or taming or else. “Forget about it. It doesn’t matter. We’re fine.” 

“Okay, but I need you to know—”

“It’s _fine_.”

“Yeah, but I need you to know something, Katagawa, shut _up_ for a little bit,” says _Rhys,_ starting to get angry. “I asked you to work with me because you are good at your job. You're meticulous, you triple-check, and sometimes I think you’re more paranoid than me, which, honestly? Creepy. I asked you because you can _help,”_ Rhys takes a deep breath and seems to want to say something but closes his mouth and just _looks_ with his _agree with me_ look Katagawa avoids his eyes, playing half-hearted humility, half-truth of not being used to positive feedback. 

“Okay,” he finally says and thinks, as if in revenge: _you will die. Everything you care about will be destroyed._

“Okay,” Rhys echoes. 

Katagawa grins. “I bet you say it to all the boys.” 

Rhys rolls his eyes, still a bit flustered. Katagawa wants it to stop. 

*

After six months of working in Atlas, Katagawa rewatches _Moonlight_ and lays on the bed with a bottle of tequila—thank god for Promethea new retail—on his stomach and the titles unfold on the ceiling’s projection. It’s too dramatic even for him. The thing to be dramatic about being the fact he needs to get close to Rhys, but every time he is close to Rhys—and all the tension Katagawa didn’t think _is capable_ of becoming bigger swells within him—he halts and backs off, because— 

Because, he admits to himself when you make a spontaneous decision about an undercover mission with a focus on a person you’ve stalked for five years, you don’t think about the way you will actually _do_ the job, you just want it to be your job. It’s classic, he thinks, _intimacy seeking_ and predatory _behaviour_ , carefully compartmentalized boxes of definition. If only defining things would help him deal with them. 

“Hey, buddy, do you wanna take a bottle of prosecco and lead me to where the Vault Key lies?” Katagawa asks the ceiling. 

He sulks. 

He turns on the side and pours himself three shots. He doesn’t remember when was the last time he drank tequila, but, for sure, limes weren’t that awful. 

Earning Rhys’ trust; dare, they said, it’s about a dare, and that’s why, instead of torturing the hell out of the man and at least giving him dignity or dying to protect his secrets, he’s here to—seduce? friendly ask? guess?—secrets out of the person who decided it’s a good idea to challenge the status quo with his saviour complex, even knowing people are aware he’d worked for Hyperion, killed people on Helios, opened the Vault. 

This is ridiculous. 

It doesn’t matter what he thinks about it, of course, as well as the bundle of _predatory_ —he makes a quote mark into a small hill of salt,—jealousy about the impossibility of having Rhys to himself. It should have ended with scheduling. It should have ended when he’s got on this mission. 

He was content with watching Rhys doing his shit for as long as he wanted, but of course, he wanted more: a great boiling mess of unintelligible, throbbing, demanding “more”, and now—well, now he can have it. He’s only a few steps apart from having it. 

And, now as he also _should,_ he finds he’s unable to. Finds he misses the distance, the bird-eye view of silent, unattached video surveillance, controlled by no one other than him. 

He pours himself another shot, drinks it, and finds a documentary about the beginning of laser-induced superconductivity studies; they’ve compared it to alchemy back then and now it’s the basis of all weapon manufacturing that uses elemental damage and Eridium in the structure of guns; casual technology. He wants his want to become casual; something he can brush aside. 

Guns… He lies back on the pillow. 

Guns lead to Naoko because she fucking _adores_ them, and he wants to talk to her terribly, but the last time he’s tried to tell her about his personal issues, she made it clear she thinks they’re unreasonable. 

It’s the longest he’s been out of contact with his family—with Maliwan, and it bothers him, too, a long-forgotten, wide pit of homesickness. He forgot it exists. They almost haven’t talked since his departure from the M. Yuko doesn’t reply to his reports. 

He wonders who’s running M&A now that he’s absent; he tries not to read too much about Maliwan—old rules live for a long time—but he does keep tabs on press releases about the last deals. It’s easy because there’s none. There are no discouraging advertising campaigns, too. 

This is a good strategy, too: to wait until Atlas collapses and pick up the pieces of its partners and clients who lost their anchoring and, most likely, hope for a "better future" after. 

He wonders if Rhys’ ever been homesick. Wonders where his home is. 

___________

 **BUSIMEDIAN CONTROVERSIAL 120:** **Atlas is on Pandora Again. SHOULD WE WORRY?** **[1:12:56]**

 **criticsuck** _1 minutes ago_   
...but it’s really unfair to say the history makes a circle, even if we’re taking everything he’s doing as shameless propaganda of another corporate “expansion”, Atlas has never really bothered with that kind of thing, too? They were very clear about the fact that freedom is bothersome and they are here to make decisions for all of us. I don’t know. Just thought it’s useful to point out. 

**ffffff** _1 minutes ago_  
i understand your concerns and blabla but fuck am i the only one who wants to ask WHY PANDORA?? who needs PANDORA??? just leave this dirtball alone for goddess sake what kind of busines ecosystem you can get there????? ffs MEN can’t do ANYTHING 

**helen** _1 minutes ago_  
he’s the vault hunter (video by helios bros, be careful: they are gross bros) and he’s on pandora, large-scale. so the answer is YES 

**quizquiz** _2 minutes ago_  
one of my friends has partnered with them and it’s..okay?? I know its widely unpopular in network communities but like can we refrain from harsh judgements for a change?besides even he is what James says he is don’t you think it’s best not to piss him off and induce his paranoia??? 

**hjelly** _2 minutes ago_  
One thing is clear: he does control Eridium mines now, check out these photos. The question of whether or not we’ll here about “cutting edge tech” remains 

**camilla** _3 minutes ago_  
does anyone know the song from the end? 

___________

At some point, after finishing a non-stop-five startups-three planets round of pre-sales, they find themselves on Demophone, a large ball of clusterfuck and recklessness that is a bit harsher and less glamorous than Dyonisus with its beaches and parties, but kind of having the same vibe. He’s been here before with Troy, and that was. That was quite a hangover. Local clients positions develop educational simulations for young engineers and medical specialists and they’re in trouble because, on Demophone, it’s a crime to be boring. Everything here has to be about entertainment. 

Not much quality entertainment, though, Katagawa murmurs to Rhys, when they walk out of the game studio office, and Rhys glances at him and laughs, quietly. Katagawa carefully inhales, thinking about Asashi’s face when he and Chihiro told him his wardrobe needs a massive reboot, and asks, 

“Do you want a drink?” 

Rhys blinks several times before turning to him. “Eghhh?” 

“Alcohol,” Katagawa repeats. 

“Yeah,” Rhys replies, searching for something on Katagawa’s face. Katagawa thinks Rhys must be _terribly_ bored, at least sometimes. “Yeah, why not.” 

They end up buying local craft beer in the shop Katagawa’s discovered in his last visit, and he prepares a story about it, but Rhys doesn’t ask. Hosts brew it themselves (see, entertainment). In the shuttle, Katagawa talks about games, because _Kindev_ develops them, too: simulations and mini-games with puzzles and quizzes. The issue is almost no one plays them, because they’re free, and people are cautious of free things. Rhys admits he used one of their game to plan out apartment complexes, Katagawa bites on the question about him keeping the reflection of giant dick in the design of Atlas’ HQs, and instead talks about the project he’s been working back on Eden-8 with a university-backed transportation company who wanted to connect all campuses in one public transport bubble; they’ve involved game developers to create a promo-game depicting how the infrastructure will operate. 

“Have it worked?” asks Rhys, landing on the couch with the bottle of beer. Katagawa sits on the handle and looks at him, his black waistcoat, white stripes on the green t-shirt, jeans. Tattoo on his neck looks like a button; he wants to bite there. He shakes his head—no, it didn’t work,—and takes a sip from his bottle, thinking about liquid courage. Liquid courage tastes like honeyed stout; too sweet for his taste.

They talk about favourite genres of games—Rhys says he learnt how to fly and drive through simulations while being in Uni. Katagawa restraints himself from squinting, preparing he’ll say his most favourite genre is strategy, but Rhys likes horror and space adventures. He tells him about a game called _Locus Amoenus—_ about people on the first three Arrows, flying to the unknown future not because Old Earth was burning, but because—

“They had money and it was cool,” Katagawa says, watching Rhys intercepting his story with alcohol. He knows his father’s grand-grand-grand-grand-father took the sixth Arrow. He was a climate scientist and knew that manufacturing capacity that is thrown on building the Arrows—giant spaceships with hyperdrives that were capable of more than twenty consequent jumps—will be the last thing pushing the planet into oblivion. Japan was almost fully underwater when the sixth Arrow left. It has not been the last one. 

“Yeah,” Rhys says. “Yeah, sort of.” Katagawa waits for elaboration, but it seems that “money and cool” associates with Hyperion in Rhys’ mind, so he tells him about a dickhead colleague who was born here, on Demophone. 

“I thought that was a necessary requirement for Hyperion employees,” Katagawa comments, disinterestedly looking in his bottle, and adds, “Being a dickhead.” 

“It was a learnt trait,” smiles Rhys, his eyes looking at somewhere what’s certainly not a window to a glowing, noisy megapolis. “But - he was a special sort of dickhead. Airlocked the previous CEO, promoted me to a - Senior Vice Janitor…” Katagawa laughs, quietly,—what an inventive enterprise. “I was angry and punched a wastebasket in the corridor after the meeting and the announcement was like - _Rhys the Vice Janitor please clean that shit up, because it’s the only thing you’re good for…_ ” Rhys turns to Katagawa and drinks a _lot_ from his beer bottle. “And my friends were like - okay, so that means we’re buying lunch? _God_.” 

The main thing about negotiations is empathizing, Katagawa thinks, and fails in it miserably, by his standards, saying, “They seem nice.” 

“Yeah,” Rhys agrees, and his expression becomes one of regret, but it’s different from the face he makes while looking up at Elpis. Less guilt. “When we came to Pandora, Yvette—one of my friends—decided that we won’t come back. So she made a deal with Vasques—a CEO who made me a Janitor—to sell my corpse off to some interested parties.” 

“Hm,” Katagawa replies. Ah. He killed her. He asks—because he can’t help himself, “What was so special in your corpse? Pardon my—” 

Rhys starts laughing, throws his head back, and can’t stop for a disturbing thirty seconds which Katagawa uses to follow the movements of his Adam’s apple. He calms down and disbelievingly shakes his head and punches Katagawa’s knee with his leg. Katagawa slips on the couch and grabs him by the calf, slips down to the ankle and turns his palm around it, feeling Rhys’ skin under it. _Caught you_. 

“That was a story about betrayal, you asshole. And you twisted it to talk about my _dead body_.” 

“Your beautiful dead body, I’m sure,” Katagawa smiles. _His_ solar plexus _aches_ with the delight of the tactile contact, a line of Rhys’ ridiculous socks with rocket launchers is close to the side of his hand. Rocket launchers. He’s so cliche. Katagawa hates him; he grips his leg tighter, thinking— _here, your Achilles tendon and all my mistakes._

“Katagawa,” Rhys calls, and Katagawa hopes he didn’t see his eyes. He remembers they fucked, alright. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to lose his shit in front of him. He turns his head to look at Rhys, and he sees Rhys’ tilting his head, just a bit, and he has that intent, dark expression Katagawa hoped he’ll never see again—never see on this mission—hoped— 

That’s a lie. 

Rhys has a smile in his voice when he continues, “Can’t believe I slept with you without knowing how fucking scary you are.” 

“I bet you think it’s hot,” Katagawa murmurs and puts his empty bottle on the coffee table. He stretches his hand to Rhys to take his bottle, too, but he slips from the couch and lands on the floor—gracefully—because Rhys jerks his leg trying to free from his hold, and he doesn’t want to let go, and that is—ridiculous, all of that is ridiculous, and he wants to laugh, but Rhys leans forward and bites into his mouth, folding fingers into his hair, so. No laughing. He softly sighs into Rhys' mouth, not taking initiative, lets him lick all available surface inside, and the want rises under his skin; he feels untethered in his body. Rhys tastes like a chocolate-flavoured beer. He pulls his jeans, and Rhys slips from the couch on Katagawa’s knees, cybernetic arm around his shoulder, palm cupping his face, lips kissing him. 

_Intimacy seeking_ , Katagawa repeats to himself, as all of him flinches to the touch. _Intimacy avoidance_. He knows all the smart words. He knows he wants to kiss Rhys until he bleeds with it. He is covetous, and it doesn’t and won’t matter. 

“I might think it’s hot,” Rhys says quietly in his ear, his breathing hot and wet and maddening. Katagawa thinks he can orgasm just from this, the cadence of Rhys' voice, a heavy, pleasant weight on his groin. He leans away to look at him, feverish heat on cheeks, noses there, breathing in—sunlit wooden panels, early autumn on a warm planet, alcohol, and Rhys moves his shoulder—it probably tickles. Katagawa feels drunk. 

Katagawa puts the hand on Rhys’ nape, brushing over a rough, small chain that goes under his shirt, and grips his hair, just to see a wince. Rhys has a stubborn expression on his face; endures the pain. He wonders if Rhys talks in bed when he doesn’t sleep with strangers. He gets to the side of his neck where a tattoo circles, and bites there, hard and long, and kneads Rhys’ ass with his free hand. He puts another bruise higher, near the hairline, under his delicate earlobe, puts a small kiss on the side of his ear, and bites his neck more. He gets his hand under the waistband of Rhys jeans, under the fabric of boxers—he did wear boxers the last time—and slides down the tender skin, gets between his cheeks and brushes a finger above his hole. Rhys lets out a ragged breath, which Katagawa barely hears over the heavy pounding in his temples. He bites him again in the ink. Rhys’ hands grip Katagawa's shoulders as he circles his rim again, more firm and insistent, and leans away to see his fluttering eyelashes, the dark in his eyes, the way he licks his lips when he notices Katagawa looking at him. Katagawa's cock throbs when their eyes meet. Smart words.

He leaves the palm on Rhys' ass, fingertips still brushing over the crease, to his balls, and takes the other hand away from bruising his neck. Rhys inhales, thrusts down on his fingers, without taking his eyes from him. Raises his eyebrow, but still doesn't talk. Katagawa hides his smile, and moves him closer to sit on his cock, and feels Rhys twitch. He catches a tiny sound escaping his mouth. He kisses him, groping his ass, pressing him onto his cock, and hopes that between bites and tugs and intrusions of Katagawa's tongue, Rhys feels a tiny fraction of how fucking much he wants him. It's good for health. If Rhys' increasingly heavy exhales and writhing on Katagawa's groin is any indication, he does.

When the kiss breaks and Katagawa drops his head to taste his neck from the other side, Rhys huffs and whimpers at the deep bite, and then says, hoarse, "ugh. Sorry, um, wait,” and, in more or less collected tone, “Yes?" 

Katagawa stops and leans away. Rhys takes a hand from his shoulder to point at his ECHO implant. Katagawa reluctantly takes his hand from under Rhys' underwear, making a last hard squeeze on the way, and is delighted by the force Rhys applies to bite into his lower lip. His lips are red and swollen. He doesn't move from Katagawa's lap. 

"—yeah,” Katagawa puts his palms on Rhys waist and strokes his sides above his shirt. He can’t look away from his mouth. “Let’s plan for the end of the fourth month. No. Nope. I won’t apologize that I don’t want conflicts, Kincaid.” Katagawa makes a sound that can be described as something between a snort and a giggle. “I—” He grips Rhys waist tighter, and bucks his hips up, thrusts in-between his cheeks under the jeans. Grins at him, seeing his mouth open and close for a few times. “Of course we’re still helping with organization. I also hope—” He’s interrupted again. Katagawa puts a finger on his lower lip. Rhys' eyebrows shift in annoyance. Katagawa hides a smile. 

Rhys mouths: _fuck off,_ lip wet under his pad. 

Katagawa leans to his ear and whispers, barely audible, _you have to stand up from me,_ and shifts back to see Rhys flush. 

“—yes, yes. Collaboration. Of course,” Rhys stands up from him and Katagawa gets on his legs quick enough to keep him from wobbling down on the floor. Sweet. “Next week, okay. I’ll call you. Have a good day.” He, apparently, finishes a call and looks at Katagawa’s nose. “You’re a—”

“For the record, I also think you’re hot,” Katagawa says. His comm calls, but the only thing that happens in his brain is the embarrassed curve of Rhys’ bitten mouth. He wonders if it’ll help with another PR situation Zhou Wei tells him about. 

*

The PR situation is more or less routine for Zhou Wei. Someone found out Atlas started on mass weapon sales, and the shit has started all over again; Katagawa’s not sure it’s ever ended—or that it’s gonna end; he wonders if it’s Isaako and Yuko using their new-found information to feed the masses. Katagawa is really puzzled about the lengths of the conversation, as it continues up to the point when Rhys tells him they need to make a jump. He tells that to her, and she lets out an unhappy sigh. He suspects he’s being called for moral support. 

“Come on, let Jon treat you to a drink and forget about the masses for a second,” Katagawa says, settling in the chair. “Or go home and sleep.” 

“It’s Jenna’s birthday, everyone’s there, and I’m looking at the bunch of assholes, who— I can’t even count which time since the beginning of the year— are up to it again. It’s the same words, same accusations, same _everything.”_

“Why would they change it if it’s working?” Katagawa asks, nipping on the side of his coffee cup. Rhys is doing something, noisily, in the back of the shuttle while they’re hanging in space. 

“That really didn’t help,” Zhou Wei says sulkily. 

“Okay, do you want to run a low-budget campaign on how they’re full of shit, show off the documents that prove them otherwise, go public with the layout of our sales processes?” 

“You know it won’t fix anything,” Zhou Wei replies. 

“Yes, so…” Katagawa makes a sip and looks at the stars. 

“Don’t patronize me, boy. I’m older than you by at least a century,” Zhou Wei mumbles. “I’m just— worried. Which is strange. Are you worried?” 

“I was so worried I’m in the business development now,” Katagawa says. “Do you want to write sarcastic comments under their articles? Ask Fred to write ten annoying hating bots? Bombard their mails with Eliezar Yudkowsky’s quotes every 42 minutes? I’ll do everything.” 

“Oh god,” Zhou Wei laughs, “No, I really don’t think— Maybe Rhys would agree for another interview?” 

“I don’t know, I’m not his PA,” Katagawa says. Zhou Wei _snorts_. “But— Remember we’ve discussed doing interviews with founders from Promethean nodes? If you want my opinion, that would be a much better option.” 

“I did think about it, but— Well. I’m gonna think again.” Zhou Wei shuffles something and there’s a click and pouring liquid. 

Katagawa feels himself frowning. “What about Jenna’s birthday?” 

“It’s _juice,_ Katagawa-xiong,” he hears that she’s smiling. Katagawa feels his ears warming. “Okay, make that jump of yours, will you?” 

Oh, this is terrible. “Say congrats to Jenna for me, please,” Katagawa says. He turns to Rhys who has a puzzled expression on his face. 

“Alright,” Zhou Wei says and the call ends. 

“That took longer than I thought,” Katagawa comments, making another sip from the cup. 

“It’s okay,” Rhys responds. They make the jump. 

*

Katagawa, for a change, spends the flight in silence. He traces the backslash on weapon selling to the first social media post—posts. Too bulky for Maliwan, he thinks, looking at the botwork with an unidentifiable location and it seems that… One of the posts commenting on the initial “revelation” about Atlas starting sales is the small business Rhys refused in firepower. Katagawa bites on a sigh. He fumbles through whatever Jackson’s persona presents in social media and finds a bunch of old Hyperion employees and a team of Helios Lives in “close friends.” Katagawa smiles. 

_HANDSOME JACK: WANTED_ , the ad in the corner of the screen says, under the hand-drawn illustration of Handsome Jack’s hologram. _HE’S ALIVE. HE’S HERE. FIND A CHIP WITH HYPERION’s CEO AND GET MAGNIFICAN REWARD. (Scan a code with your comm or eye implant to see the details.)_

After days with Zhou Wei and Jon, they’re like his kids. Stupid kids. So, so stupid. Too bad Atlas’ PR plan doesn’t have room for diversion. He and Zhou Wei spend countless hours arguing about that—and honestly, he suspects she hasn’t been really on the opposite side? 

“We’re here,” Rhys says, and Katagawa blinks into reality. “What happened?” 

“Nothing,” the general rule was not to tell Rhys about any minor shit—at least until there’s a strategy to resolve it. Katagawa unbuckles himself from the chair and stretches, tired from sitting. He smiles, looking at Rhys’ face. “Thanks for the ride, boss.” 

Rhys rolls his eyes, and Katagawa’s suddenly grateful for the distraction thinking about Zhou Wei call and his older siblings and PR and idiots provided because now he can see Rhys’ neck _mauled_. It looks like he’s got a few new tattoos, abstract style, some on top of the first one. His inked circle looks like a shot wound. It pleases him im-fucking-mensly, but he can’t help but think about other places he could have bruised and buried his teeth in. 

“You’re welcome,” Rhys finally says, like an afterthought, ripped out from context. Katagawa shifts his eyes to look at him, and his eyes inevitably slip on his lips. “You’re very intense,” Rhys comments, laughing nervously. 

Katagawa tilts his head. 

“That’s because I want you very much,” Katagawa says, wondering at how calm and collected his voice sounds. 

Rhys laughs, and it’s choked and startled, but he doesn’t exactly seem surprised at the fact; more on the vocalisation. “Uh, okay. Do you wanna— Do you wanna go to Jenna's party?” 

Katagawa raises his eyebrow and feels the corner of his lip going up. “No.” 

“Right,” Rhys sighs, “Right, okay.” 

Katagawa lets the awkward silence feel the room. He does enjoy it, but he can’t allow it to fill all the space in Rhys' head, so it’s not very long. “Is there any chance there's a party in your apartment?” 

“What,” Rhys snorts and laughs. “ _What?_ That was awful.” Katagawa can’t stop shifting his eyes between Rhys’ face and his bruised neck. 

“Do you want to fuck, Rhys?” Katagawa asks, articulating the last consonants. They sound loud after the pause. He watches Rhys swallow. He probably will need to bruise his throat, too. He thinks about what’s showing in his eyes, thinks about Rhys’ silence. Wonders if his throat is dry. Katagawa’s is not. 

Maybe he should have taken a subtler route. He comes closer to him, but not too close, — and the constellations of hickeys on his neck become more visible; he gains colour. Katagawa can see his teeth marks, and the heaviness settles in his stomach. He takes him by the hand and Rhys watches him, follows his gesture, eyes dark. It must be a tough decision for him. Katagawa kisses his knuckles, licks over the kiss, and smiles at him. He knows it doesn’t look kind. It doesn’t feel kind. “I know that’s a loaded question. Text me what you think — or don’t; anything is pretty okay by me.” 

He puts Rhys’ hand away to where it’s been, tense and almost glued to his side, and turns to pick up his bag and leave the shuttle, but when it’s in his hand, his other hand—the cuffs of his shirt—are gripped. 

“Yes,” Rhys says. He looks at Katagawa like he’s just thrown a punch, like he needs to defend from it. Katagawa pulls him by the hand and leans to kiss him, slow and without biting, gleeful from the way Rhys squirms expecting pain. 

“Show me your flat, then,” Katagawa murmurs and wiggles his eyebrows. Rhys groans and turns to the exit, mumbling something about terrible people who know nothing about flirting. Katagawa doesn’t engage with the monologue but makes sure to walk behind him—just enough to have a little crisis about the fact this is not, by any means, what he wants to be a part of his undercover efforts. 

*

Despite the fact they take an alternate route, they still end up seeing Rumi and Keith Walsh, advertising people from Marketing, who rarely work in-house, in the dark corridor. It’s late evening, and there’s drowsy ambient music playing from the BDD office (Jenna must be really out of it). Rhys walks with his collar up, with a hand above his tattoo. Rumi and Keith raise their glasses at them and continue arguing about something—Katagawa doesn’t quite catch—but he feels Rumi’s eyes slip over him, and there’s an appreciative expression on his face which Katagawa recognizes from his numerous art talks. He sighs. 

Rhys’ apartment, AC1A2, is connected to his office. He lets Katagawa inside, leans his back on the door, and snaps his fingers to light up the room.

“That went well,” he says, and Katagawa puts his bag under the wall— laptop — and crowds him, puts his hands around Rhys’ head, moving closer to brush his lips on his forehead. Rhys exhales. 

“Of course,” Katagawa replies in the sweetest tone possible which, he’s quite sure, sounds disgusting, and gets a pinch under his ribs. Rhys turns his head up, an invitation. “They totally bought your wonderfully constructed,” he licks Rhys’ lips once, “elegant”, twice, “deceptive,” thrice, “act.” 

There’s been no act. Katagawa just likes to talk bullshit. 

“Shut up,” Rhys groans and pinches him again, stronger, and Katagawa grins in his mouth because it tickles and he finds Rhys’ bossiness delightful. He slips on his knees and slips his palms under Rhys’ shirt, tugs the nails from his chest down. It’s soft, but thin red lines would appear on Rhys skin anyway. Rhys pushes his hips forward on a quiet exhale, and Katagawa feels his hardness covered with a fabric of his trousers with his chin, and, as he lifts his head to look at Rhys, with his throat. His skin almost burns there. He needs to swallow a few times to speak, thinking about conditional responses, elicited by five years of observation elicit. _Research. Intimacy seeking._

“I, on the other hand,” he resumes, circling Rhys’ nipple with his thumb, and he notices he sounds defeated and Rhys notices that too; raises a concerned eyebrow that looks funny, coupled with arousal. Katagawa lowers his head to talk into his groin, both to muffle his voice and for the sheer fun of it. “Am completely obvious. I’m sure they’re discussing my creepy crush right now.”

“ _A_ _crush_? You have— a crush?” Rhys asks quietly, and there’s disbelief inkling his voice. Eridium drugs? A crush? Katagawa knows he can’t joke about this, so he stays on his knees, face in Rhys’ groin, and tries to stop fixating on his smell. Being a person, he remembers. That’s when it’s useful. 

He thinks: _you are the only thing I know how to want on my own._

He thinks: _I wanted you for so long that if Maliwan wouldn’t be able to get you, I might pass for a surrogate because the knowledge about the things you are - or things I think you are - will spill from every question they’d ask._

He thinks: _maybe it was their plan all along. Maybe, that’s what this undercover job is about._

Instead, he answers, raising his head to look into Rhys’ surprised eyes and grins: “Of course, I do, buddy. Didn’t I say I want you?” 

Rhys groans. “It’s not the— Is there any chance you will stop calling me that in the sex context?” Katagawa wasn’t aware there’s a whole _context._

“What sex context?” he asks, because he likes to reel people, and mouths at the button on his trousers. Takes it into his mouth. When Rhys’ hand comes to rest on his cheek, he thinks he might faint — right here — _they already had this —_ but when such inconveniences have stopped him. “Don’t you want to get hard every time you hear the word buddy?” 

“You’re such a dick,” Rhys laughs, half-heartedly, and shoves two fingers in his mouth - the button slips away and Katagawa glares at him with a mock offence, enjoying the taste of him. 

He leans away from his fingers to say, “You like it,” pushes more saliva between them, coming back, and _beams_ at him, pressing a canine into the knuckle of Rhys’ middle finger. Rhys rolls his eyes and pulls off his hand with a loud, dirty sound. Rubs the wet on his cheek while Katagawa unbuttons his trousers. 

Katagawa quite likes it, too. He puts a small kiss above the wet spot of Rhys boxers and breathes in, recounting elements on the prime numbers of the periodic table backward not to come in his pants. He puts his hands on Rhys’ shoes, while he’s at it, and does a quick job with bootlaces. His breathing makes Rhys’ cock twitch. 

“Raise up your foot,” Katagawa says, and he— does, after a little pause. He takes the shoe away. Fucking rocket launcher socks. He swallows. “Another one.” 

“What—” Rhys hums, “I don’t know what to do with my hands when you’re—” 

“Ah,” Katagawa smiles and stands up to take his shoes off, too. It’s obvious that the question isn’t relevant anymore, and Rhys frowns at him for it, so he says, “Put them on my shoulders.” He does, another bit of reluctance, and it makes him grin more when he leans forward to take him under the ass and deadlifts, feeling his legs clamp behind his back. Rhys has a shocked look on his face. Katagawa tries not to be too self-congratulatory and fails at it, — this way, Rhys’ bruised neck is a bit above him, and he kisses there, long and almost—almost—gentle, leaning Rhys’ wiggling form to the wall. He wants it to last, so he kisses, and bites, and bruises everywhere he didn’t before and avoids Rhys lips until he bucks his hips so hard that Katagawa needs to refocus to stay balanced. _Eager_ , he thinks and looks up at Rhys’ eyes. It helps that there’s _light_ here, and his flush is visible. 

“Tell me if I’m going the wrong way,” Katagawa says, and walks them to where he knows Rhys’ bedroom is. Rhys giggles in his ear. It’s breathy. Warm. He puts him back on the floor—Rhys sways a bit, and gets on his knees again, saying, “On my shoulders,” and starts undressing him. The fact his zipper is already open is a good help, so he can stroke above his cock while he tugs his jeans down. Rhys doesn’t need to be told to lift his legs now. Katagawa gets rid of the socks he has a beef with and kisses him on the knee. Takes off his boxers, too, and laps on the precome gathered at the head of his cock. It jerks between his lips, and he gets down, teeth digging into the inner sides of his lips, and pats the back of Rhys' knees with his hands, just to steady himself.

Not the steadiest thing, though. He keeps going, enjoying the taste and fullness in his mouth, and feeling the desperate want to rub his dick at something, and at some point, Rhys starts moving his hips forward, meeting his mouth, and Katagawa feels his throat stretch and it’s— yeah. He thinks it would generally be a good idea to stay like that for a long time. 

Rhys’ palm leaves his shoulder and lays on his head, he even— unsurely— attempts to grip his hair, and Katagawa pulls away from his cock with a wet noise that makes Rhys squirm. Oh, Katagawa _drools_. He thinks he drenched Rhys almost to his hole. He wants to tell him to get his hand back on his hair, but instead, he kisses the tip of his cock and gets his tongue to circle around the slit. Lightly. There’s more precome. 

“Hmm,” he says, fairly sure it sounds like he enjoys his food, and Rhys turns his head away from him, unsteady on his legs, chest rising heavily. Katagawa wonders how much he wants to come, and makes another swirl around his cockhead. “You taste good.” 

“I—” Rhys breathes out.

“Do you have lube?” 

“Yeah, I—” Katagawa catches him by the hips to prevent him from turning away and gets his cock in his throat again, feeling getting pleasantly sore. Rhys moans, finally, and Katagawa starts swallowing around him, three times until Rhys’ hands rise from his shoulders and his hips start twitching. Rhys’ cock swells, stretching his mouth,—Katagawa adores the feeling and almost regrets leaning away. Rhys' gaze _burns._ “Just tell me where it is,” he smiles. 

“Where is— Under the bed. You know, you’re really annoying sometimes.” 

“Only sometimes?” Katagawa grins, getting lube from under the bed—it’s without smell, thank _god—_ and when he turns away, Rhys is sitting on it. Katagawa sits, too, and pulls him to get in his lap. He gets a lubed finger between Rhys’ cheeks and slides a line over the entrance. Rhys' breath catches. Two times over almost three years, huh. Must be really hard. Rhys’ cock damps Katagawa’s shirt, and it makes him smile. He leans forward and tugs Rhys’ collars with his teeth. “Take it off.” 

“You have a free hand,” Rhys—pouts. Katagawa grips Rhys’ thigh with his free hand and spreads him more and gropes his cheek, kneading the flesh, hard. 

“I really don’t,” he smiles. Rhys’ eyes flash with irritation. He puts cybernetic hand on his shoulder and attempts to shove him down, which would have worked someday but not today, and then, with the same irritated air, he kisses him, hard and harsh and biting, fucking in Katagawa’s mouth, arching his hips into Katagawa’s hand. It almost feels like it did work. Katagawa gets a finger into him to the knuckle and Rhys moans around a bite, his mouth getting slacked. He’s so tight. Katagawa’s not thinking about it. Katagawa kisses him, while he’s at it, gets his finger deeper, and digs his nails into his ass. “Ah, more of that, right?” 

“Nice deduction,” Rhys whimpers, “how did you come to that concl—” 

That gets him another finger and a thrust that deliberately misses his prostate. “Your shirt,” Katagawa kisses him and starts fingering him. It’s a leisurely pace, and Rhys’ constantly buckles in-between thrusts, trying to get more. “Take off your shirt or I’ll pull out and just watch you jerk off.” 

Rhys gasps, swallowing around the sound, and glares at him. “First of all, that’s not what we—” Katagawa presses his fingers to his prostate, gently. Pulls away to scissor them, and presses them deeper again. Firmer. He feels his shirt getting wetter—Rhys leaks. That feels wonderful. Rhys' mouth falls open for a few moments. Katagawa leans to him to lick saliva and the sound Rhys lets out at it, and turns to his ear. 

“Take off your shirt, Rhys,” he whispers, putting small kisses on the side of his ear. “Don’t you want to come? I really want to make you come. I’m sure you’ll look gorgeous when you do.” Rhys shivers in his arms and Katagawa grips his ass tighter. 

“No one looks good when they come,” Rhys says, and god it’s really been a long time for him, isn’t it? He sounds almost whiney. Katagawa likes it. He finally starts unbuttoning his shirt. Katagawa bites a smile and gets a third finger into him for that, and he— curves, beautifully, thrusts down on his hand with fingers still on his shirt under a half-opened collar. 

“You do,” Katagawa says, and Rhys trembles again and leans a head on his shoulder, breathing ragged and wet. Katagawa kisses his hair and fucks him harder, obviously interfering with a process of taking the shirt off, and Rhys moans in pleasure and sighs in annoyance and that keeps Katagawa from thinking about the fact that even if he gets his cock into him now he'll still be very tight and scorching hot. He notices Rhys’ finished with the buttons before he says so. He helps him to take it off and turns them over, carefully, without pulling away his fingers. 

Rhys relaxes when his back touches the mattress—understandable. Clenches on his fingers. Katagawa stops moving them and looks at him. 

They didn’t put the blinders on—or maybe Rhys doesn’t use them at all,—so he looks at his flushed chest and darkened nipples, at the pedant—a simple metallic cube that fell in the dip between his collarbones, the pastel blue curls of tattoos that stream down his torso, his tense stomach and red, heavy cock lying on it. When their eyes meet, Katagawa feels him clamp around his fingers again, so he brushes his thumb around his hole and fucks deeper, just once. When Rhys inhales, the tattoos almost seem to be moving. He looks like the only reason to like Promethea’s sunset. 

“So pretty,” Katagawa says and puts a kiss on his knee he apparently lifted to get leverage. “Do you think you can take four?” 

Rhys turns his head away and thrusts down in tiny, shivering movements. Katagawa leans away to add more lube, trying not to look down too much and not fixate on how good Rhys’ feels around his finers, how stretched and swollen his rim looks, and how he wants to bite it and fuck it and make him full of his spend. He kisses his knee again instead, and lower, down to his groin, dips the tongue in the hollow of his iliac crest, trailing kisses up to the center of his abdomen, and lays his head there, listening to the fast beating of his heart. Rhys trembles like a string. His cock brushes Katagawa’s lips when it jerks, when Katagawa’s fingers go too deep and press too strong on his prostate. 

“You’re doing very well,” Katagawa says and licks the precome from his cock again. Rhys _whines_ and his metallic, cold hand lands on Katagawa’s back and digs in his skin through the fabric of his shirt. He supposes it’s is an encouragement to go on, and Katagawa—goes on, taking Rhys’ cock between his lips again and sucks hard _,_ hearing Rhys biting on a large, delicious moan, arching his spine up, and, seconds after, thrust down, trapped between fingers inside of him and Katagawa’s throat. 

Rhys says something - without, apparently, stopping biting his lower lip. Katagawa lifts himself to look at him, swiftly, but carefully, pulling out fingers from his ass. Rhys moans at the loss and grips his shoulder tighter. It’s almost painful. Katagawa hides a smile. 

“What did you say?” 

Rhys groans helplessly, his sweaty hair clinging to his forehead. Katagawa fucks in his fingers again, and leaves them there, deep, stuffing his hole. He feels lightheaded. 

“You’re a terrible tease,” Rhys tells him in a breathless whisper. 

“I know,” Katagawa leans into his hand and turns the head to kiss the metallic wrist. He moves up to Rhys’ shoulder, giddy with arousal and power, melting under his angry glare. He puts his arm around Rhys’ dick, palms softly under the head, where his saliva mixes with the precome, and Rhys thrusts in the circle of his fingers. He nuzzles on Rhys’ neck, close to his ear again, where his skin gets saltier, and breathes in, softly grinding into Rhys' thigh. Just a few times. Rhys presses back into contact, searching, and Katagawa lets out a breathless laugh into his neck and pulls away. 

“Take off your fucking pants,” Rhys breathes irritation, and that is wonderful, and Katagawa does and gets back in his briefs, gets his face into Rhys’ neck, with his thigh leaning onto Rhys’, just barely. He kisses his neck where he can, licking off the sweat. Gets up on the elbow and leaves soft, small bites all the way up to Rhys’ throat, to where Rhys chokes on the sounds in him. He circles around Rhys’ cock again, light touches, barely there. Rhys digs his teeth in the tender skin of his lower lip. Katagawa licks there, right above his teeth, and Rhys opens up for the kiss, letting him swallow the hungry sound that leaves his mouth. 

Rhys bites so _much_ Katagawa feels hazy from short and deep tugs. He must really want to come. 

He’s beautiful. 

He gets his fingers into him again and pins both of Rhys’ wrists to the mattress with the free hand. Rhys twists and fidgets under him, tense, trying to chase the orgasm he’s been denied since he kissed Katagawa hours ago. Katagawa all but laughs at him and kisses his flushed cheek. 

“I should let you ride it out, yes?” Katagawa asks, leaning into his ear and rubbing at his prostate. He sees his cock jerk and leak, he sees the desperate wetness gathering in the corners of his eyes. Oh dear. Rhys thrusts up and tries to free his hands, but Katagawa holds him still, and continues bragging, “Or do you want my cock? It _is_ difficult to choose since you won’t talk to me.” 

“Katagawa—” Rhys wheezes and Katagawa shuts him up with a brief kiss and tucks the pendant from his neck with his mouth. 

“Is there a story behind it?” He asks, leaning over Rhys, tongue under the chain, so the pendant bumps into his nose. Rhys pushes down onto Katagawa’s fingers and mewls. 

“Not a very good one.” There is an inkling of unknown emotion in his eyes. They flash with pain or guilt or something else, sombre and quiet, and it’s a bright contrast to the aroused, dark, irritated look he’s had this whole time. Katagawa places a pendant between Rhys’ lips with his teeth and licks above it, above the seam of his mouth and a salty cube of metal. 

Rhys’ eyes widen. Katagawa fucks into him again, deep and full, and Rhys thrusts up into the air once, twice, and comes, clenching on Katagawa’s fingers and biting his shoulder, then frees his hands and digs his fingers into his back—it will probably leave scratches even through the shirt. 

Rhys lets the pendant fall from his mouth. Katagawa smiles at him pleasantly and carefully gets the fingers out of him. 

Rhys’ hand drops lower, and he says, voice hoarse, “There’s come on your shirt.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” he stands up to get something from wet cloth or something like that from the bathroom and Rhys catches his wrist. He still breathes heavily. Katagawa almost can’t look at him. 

“What about—” Rhys’ looks at his groin. 

“Don’t worry about it either,” Katagawa smiles at him again, it’s smaller — and warmer, he hopes. He wants it to be warmer. “Let me clean you up.” 

“But—” Rhys inhales and swallows. Katagawa looks at his nose instead of looking, like, anywhere else. “Okay. There are— There are paper towels in the kitchen.” 

“Alright. Be back in a minute.” 

When he comes back, Rhys is already sleeping. He does clean him up. Finds a large, warm blanket on the chair near the window and covers him with it. 

His stomach hurts, but it’s nothing in comparison to the fact he didn’t look for a Vault Key. 

Even though he very much doubts Rhys would have kept the Vault Key in his apartment—he didn’t even put it on the list of probable locations, he might be wrong, he should still do it, but—he’s exhausted. 

He looks at the pendant chain above Rhys’ bruises and puts a hand to his own neck. 

When Rhys stirs under the blanket, putting a large part of it between his legs and snuggling into his pillow, he leaves. 

*****

The waiting resolves in the following algorithm: Zer0 comes to the office of the business development team and calls him outside. The red hologram in front of Zer0's helmet says: _fuck._ He says, voice deep and gravel: “Rhys has disappeared. He had a meeting with a security team two hours ago and he didn’t come. No one has seen him since five o’clock yesterday.” 

Katagawa isn’t sure why he is the person Zer0 came to, but he excuses himself from the room - Jenna shoots him a concerned look but doesn’t say anything, and they walk towards the security section of the headquarters. The team in place discusses if Rhys can be abducted, and Katagawa lists potential candidates outside of Maliwan and swears at the no-excessive-surveillance rule Rhys established to respect people’s privacy. They cover the main building, manufacturing blocks, training facilities, shooting ranges, and hangars for weapon tests. Nothing. Katagawa is cold and annoyed and drinks his fourth cup of coffee in two hours. 

Then, he receives an encrypted text with coordinates from Takeshi - old Atlas’ facility that is almost on the far edge of the circle of Atlas’ buildings; he recognizes it from his report of probable locations of the Vault Key—from eleven of them, it had the lowest probability; it’s AI experiments lab. Two of Atlas' oldest engineers who specialize in machine learning work there because they like the style and don’t like to be bothered; he put it there because it’s as close to a place where Rhys can have fun as it could be. 

He stares at the Atlas’ buildings on the hologram and suggests to cover old storages and construction sites which are close to the facility they need, as the head of security, Gabi Lateef, receives a call. She’s one of the early employees, a hardware engineer: he remembers her laugh, her violet headwrap and a collection of jeans jackets, and the way she and Rhys ran all over apartment complexes while installing defence equipment. She was one of few people who had their info open on social media when they started working for Atlas - which is, in Katagawa’s book, a sign of a good security specialist. 

“Hotaru called,” she said. “She and Fred came to work - and found their office destroyed. Apparently, this is what we need. Hm, how they--” 

But Katagawa doesn’t listen. He calls the ED, ignoring _everything’s gonna be ok!_ from Jenna and sends them the coordinates. 

Zer0 operates the shuttle. 

They find Rhys unconscious near the ruins, the irony, and while Zer0 checks his pulse - Rhys moves in a way a person who isn’t aware of their limbs moves - and goes into a hole in the wall, where the door has been. Katagawa takes the water bottle from the shuttle. 

Rhys meets his eyes, all hurt and confusion under trembling eyelashes. His eye implant seems to be malfunctioning, its colour cyan blue. Katagawa touches his sweaty forehead and rubs off the dirt from his cheeks. Circles a bruise on his temple. _Fuck._ He puts a water bottle to Rhys’ lips. 

“Don’t get too excited. You were gone for 23 hours. I somehow doubt you stayed hydrated,” he says as Rhys starts making small gulps, all of them followed with quiet groans of pain. When he leans away, Katagawa helps him to sit up, putting his palm under Rhys head to keep him from wobbling back and forth. 

Talking feels like throwing rocks. 

“I’m gonna vomit,” Rhys informs. 

“Sexy talk,” Katagawa comments. 

Rhys, true to the warning, vomits, and Katagawa holds him through it. The thrown up mass, mostly liquid, smells like some of Discovery Division 1 labs on Nekrotefayo, and the red steals Katagawa vision, all efforts going into keeping his fingers from curling into furious hold on Rhys’ body. He puts a bottle to Rhys’ lips again to distract himself. 

“We’ve called the ED. They’ll come soon,” Katagawa says when Rhys finishes drinking and takes the bottle into his hand. Katagawa doesn’t quite stop touching him. Eridium poisoning, weak solution. Gas. He wonders if it will get out of Rhys’ system if he shakes him enough. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know,” Rhys says hoarsely. Katagawa holds his look, anxious fingers patting the bruise on his neck. He’s so viscerally angry he thinks he can burst with it, too. What a pair would they be. “I worked and then felt like shit, figured it’s time to wrap it up, and— boom. Old, but gold.” 

Katagawa hums. “Your ECHO looks weird. Brighter than usual,” he says, just to fill the silence. Rhys blinks at him, and Katagawa puts a dusty curl behind his ear. He wants to pin Rhys to the ruins of the building and never let go. 

“Is it?” Rhys asks, frowning. Katagawa nods. “Oh. I’m an idiot.” 

He is, and there's a flicker of fear on his face. Katagawa grins at it. 

Atlas’ ambulance vehicle arrives, and he stands up, offering Rhys a hand instead of pulling him up. Rhys _glares._ Katagawa is delighted. Rhys takes his hand and says he needs to go to his office. He tries to walk, and stumbles on his legs, and falls further into Katagawa arms and Katagawa delightedly tells him he's a fool. 

“Shut up,” Rhys tells him as they continue to walk towards the nurse who seems very not amused with the situation. “God, I’m so fucked.” 

Katagawa looks at the nurse, looks at Rhys’ messy head, and looks at the nurse again, trying to telepathically communicate _can you believe this guy._ He seems to get it, his pale features growing darker and darker. 

“Not really,” Katagawa whispers, and that gets him another glare. He smiles, leading Rhys into the nurse’s hold. “What you are is possibly brain-damaged.” 

“I’m not brain-damaged,” Rhys says. Katagawa rolls his eyes in perfect synchronicity with the nurse. 

“You want me to come with you?” Katagawa asks. 

“No,” Rhys leans into a chair that lifts him up in the vehicle that looks really funny, actually. Like a little throne. “Get some sleep.” 

“Sure, buddy,” Katagawa says, smiling. 

“We’re going to talk about your language, Katagawa,” Rhys threatens. 

“I’ll be waiting,” Katagawa replies and looks at the nurse. His name is David, he can see the badge now. “He doesn’t have any urgent work, just so you know.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” David offers him a small smile. 

“I hate you,” Rhys mouths from behind the closing doors of the ambulance. 

* 

Yuko doesn’t respond to his calls, which is weird, considering post-operation timing, but not unusual: they are really busy. 

_Please, warn me next time, Yuko-san,_ he writes to them, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

 _I understand that’s inconvenient, but you needed to be surprised and he needed to feel threatened to come to you afterwards,_ the message comes. 

Katagawa bites his lower lip, and writes, feeling anger heating him up like a wildfire, _why do you think external physical threats would make him seek my MBA degree?_

He looks at it for a few seconds and deletes it, swallowing the taste of dehydration. _Thank you._ That’s right. They are all here for the same thing, aren’t they? 

_Are you alright?_ They ask in the next message.

 _I’m good,_ he responds. 

He wants to ask them if they know where Naoko is but figures that even if they do—and she’s on the mission,—he’ll still know nothing.

*

Kazuko and Miller whine about stolen chips with their projects (Hotaru’s especially bitter about her pet AI-driven malware she’s worked on last month.) Rhys increases security after the incident, still without hiring a proper bodyguard, but often walking with Zer0’s threatening shadow on the background and gets more employee training and more nauseating encouraging speeches with words repeated so often that they lose their meaning and so on and so on. Katagawa boils to the bone with possessive anger and self-loathing that closely follows the process: he’s the one with delusions; Rhys isn’t his to take; he should just _stop_ and do his fucking job. He was always good at keeping emotions below the surface level. No reason for that to change now. 

Rhys, somehow, seems changed—not that there are lots of interaction between them on this point, Katagawa’s busy with meetings from startups from B- and C-NODEs and Rhys’ all in tech details on how to make Atlas’ security stronger. He still overworks, the capillaries popping in his eyes, drinks more coffee than a person with a concussion should _see,_ but something subtle—secret and small—changes. 

Katagawa poses on what it could be, what has caused the transformation, and, after a few meetings where Rhys’ presence as a CEO and data science specialist is absolutely required, it becomes as obvious as the red flags. 

It’s like Maliwan has beaten it out of him: Rhys doesn’t seem lonely anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Additional content warnings** : mentions of violence and violent thoughts, gas attack, explosions, head injury, gas poisoning, vomit.
> 
> \-------
> 
> Predicting questions: I'm using Star Wars canon for interplanetary travel because I'm lazy. Also, there are six planetary systems, not six galaxies like in Borderlands, because it's easier for interplanetary travel purposes. 
> 
> Katagawa and his siblings use honorifics only when talking in Japanese. Zhou Wei uses _-xiong_ in English because she teases him and his patronizing. As far as I've gathered, _-xiong_ is a honorific that is used to call someone from the same group/of the same age as you respectfully, so Zhou Wei twists it to show Katagawa that he is not, in fact, of the same age, and can shove his concern about her drinking alcohol alone in *beep*. He doesn't know Chinese but understands it because he knew Chinese-speaking people before and is familiar with the honorifics system. [If I got the honorific part wrong, feel free to yell at me on twitter https://twitter.com/mrskinseyfour — don't be intimidated by cyrillic, I'm Ukrainian, and English is my third language]. 
> 
> Katagawa Yuko is non-binary, thus "they/them" pronounces. 
> 
> _Netsite_ is like website, but (hides the face in her hands) in Network. I'm just as bad in naming things as the people from Enter Price. I mean, I named _them_. 
> 
> So. Tell me what you think! <3


	3. pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s do it,” Yuko says, their back straight and tense. “You’ll take control of the mission. At the same time, Takeshi-kun, Amaya-chan, and Asashi, who’s just arrived on Partali, will catch and restrain the siren. I assume you have a plan?” 
> 
> Katagawa has a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *clown music* editing is fun! and it takes longer than writing. let’s move to content warnings! 
> 
> **content warnings** : (dream) spanking; (not dream) coming in pants, anal fingering, anal sex, rough sex, sadism, blowjob, slight edging, slight overstimulation; brief and vague af description of sex with OMC; violence, **gas explosions** , casual explosions, vandalism, **panic attack** , mentions of past PAs, strangulation, **use of safeword** , despite there’s no kink negotiations whatsoever. there’s also a bit of Maliwan’s surveillance in Katagawa’s flat; it has no impact on sex things, but i thought i'd give you a warning.
> 
> if some of these CWs disturbed you, i've elaborated on few of them in the end notes. **please check them out!**

"Fuck!" Rhys cries, gasping for air, squirming, but not moving away. Good. "Fuckfuckfuck. Eight."

Katagawa's cock leaks over his hole. He smears it with his fingers, looking at Rhys' rim tightening at his touch, and leans away to spread his thighs with gentle, soothing movements that make Rhys tense and stop squirming, staying open and wet and perfect. All for him to see. Katagawa's palms are pale on the reddened skin of his ass. He gets one to Rhys' cock, full and throbbing in the hold, and leans down to kiss the low of Rhys back, the bony peaks of his vertebrates. Rhys breathes heavily and arches into the movement. Shivers. Katagawa caresses his cock more, soft lines against his hardness. Enjoys his velvety, tender skin. He looks at the line of Rhys' waist, ideal to hold, at the strained muscles of his back, wings of his shoulder blades, sharpened by the position. Glances at the flush of his face, half-hidden in the pillow. He leans away regretfully taking his hand off Rhys' cock and slaps, heavy and hard, against where his ass is almost violet, and, when Rhys soundlessly sways from it and wheezes, a soft, wretched sound, instead of saying _nine_ , Katagawa does it again, grabs him by the hips, and thrusts inside him, full-length, nails digging into his hot skin. 

Rhys wails when he comes and Katagawa wakes up in the drenched, sticky pants. 

_For fuck's sake._

*

Vague, annoyed anger at Maliwan ends, leaving him frazzled and drained, and when he finally gathers his wits to continue his getting-closer-to-Rhys-who-is-not-lonely endeavour, it's been two weeks from the incident, and Jenna tells him after a daily meeting that Rhys’ just sent an email saying he’s left for a business trip. 

He looks for the traces of Rhys' trip — destinations, records from the little number of cameras Atlas has, mentions of anything in Atlas' operations project notes. Nothing. He wants to ask Jenna where he went and when he’s coming back, but decides against it, almost sure they did discuss his creepy crush after the night that triggered the fucking waterfall of wet dreams. It’s not that he cares about decorum, he just thinks that too much noise around a thing can destabilize it. He doesn’t want it. 

_he’s not on the planet. let’s hit locations i’ve sent out,_ he writes to Yuko. 

_let me think on it,_ Yuko responds. 

Three weeks pass while they’re at it. 

Katagawa learns to cook “almost perfect”, according to Rumi’s Jamaican taste buds (quote), shrimp asopao, finishes all books on his tablet and onboards George Huibers, young drop-out of Eden-8 Business School who spend the last year on Atheanas’ order of Impending Storm who is very chill and quick. He’s about the only person who’s chill in the BDD. 

Kim stops shooting him suspicious looks after meeting him on his morning run, which is good news for them both, probably. Katagawa’s never liked the mess. 

One evening he gets into the room near the BDD office to get new garbage bags and see Porters fucking. 

He closes the door, inhales, comes back to his workstation and turns on the documentary about the theories of Eridians origins, trying not to think of Rhys-from-his-dreams who he fucked, just like that, in the empty office of HQs, or Rhys-completely-off-radars, unreachable and untraceable for so long for the first time in five years. 

He missed something. Has he always disappeared? If so, where did he go? 

Jenna comes to him halfway into it and sits near his table. 

“Hey,” she hugs Huibers’ monstera sitting near his workstation — he brought flowers to all of the BDD, and Katagawa thought it’s a good thing Scott doesn’t know anything about plant names — and purposefully not looking at his screen. He moves on the chair to reach for buttons on the coffee machine behind him.

“Coffee?”

“Nah, you know I’m trying to quit this shit,” Jenna makes a face at him. She looks at her hands, then at him, then at her hands again. “Is everything okay?” 

“Of course,” Katagawa smiles. “Is something the matter?” 

“No, just checking. You seem… down lately. Do you know you have vacation left, right? If you’re tired…” 

“I’m not tired,” Katagawa says, too quickly, and Jenna grins at him. He became so complacent. He should be grateful it’s not “I see you sulking when Rhys is not here”, because he is not ready for this conversation.

“It’s okay to take a break even if you’re not,” she says, choosing to ignore the obvious lie. “George’s already settled and meet-up season ended. Perfect time for rest.”

“I,” Katagawa looks on the screen where the sequence of theory Eridians are a part of Old Earth’s Ancient Egypt civilization plays out. “I’ll think about it.” 

Complacency is an issue to resolve, as is Rhys missing. He fills a vacation request for two weeks (“You don’t have to move out from your flat - you know that, right?” asks Ye Xiulan from the HR and Katagawa blinks at her, as he didn’t even think about it.) 

He looks above Jenna’s shoulder, on the eternal sunrise on Promethea through a bullet-proof window, when she says everything will be fine with his projects while he’s absent. Katagawa doesn’t tell her he doesn’t have ongoing projects and accepts the courtesy. He sees her reflection on the door as he leaves. 

He closes off in his flat and lifts the encryption from the hidden folder on his laptop. 

He fills a timeline. He sits on the floor, looking at the glowing blue hologram of Rhys’ movements. Nothing seems wrong, at first sight. Just never a three-weeks leave.

Katagawa looks at Rhys’ face from two years ago. It’s weird to be looking at these for his family. He didn’t rewatch them before, one of the rules of his forget-the-man strategy. Ridiculous. 

There is an error, somewhere. He just needs to find it. 

* 

He finds nothing: not in the first year and a half of constant supervision, not later; he could have sent it on festival Eden-10 cinematography community hold every once in a while: how to convey the desire to crawl under person’s skin via four cameraflies of one major corporation; how Pandora makes first-time entrepreneurs tired; how guilt can isolate you. 

For three days, he watches him again, binging through the records, drinking kabocha soup (spiciness for sweetness; change is good) and thinking it’s a time-waste, seeing, once again, the way Rhys doesn’t notice Maliwan’s Pandorians around him. 

Rhys calls them bandits, just like the rest of the world, Katagawa now knows; Maliwan doesn’t, and he still feels bad about making them do his work back then. It should be sobering, this thought. Rhys and the way he talks about people who were practically created by Dahl and old Atlas. This should be _we’re different_ notion as if Katagawa doesn’t have enough of those. 

Nothing about differences sobers Katagawa.

Grandfather built Maliwan as if it’s an orphanage; a place where all the lost come for protection and safety and gets to work from there, and his father turned it into a weapon. Rhys, partially, means to build Atlas like a lighthouse that helps businesses run safely. Rhys doesn’t keep them inside, sure, but it doesn’t matter in the public eye right now: they all rely on atlas protégé narrative, and it will take Rhys’ lifetime to prove them wrong. 

His review is unproductive. The moment from years ago: Rhys falls into bed like his strings were cut and groans from exhaustion — invades his dreams, and it’s worse than dreams about him, sweaty, drained, smiling from pleasure; worse than dreams about laying on Rhys’ thigh, mouth full with his _almost_ soft cock and feeling him touch the back of his hand once in a while; worse than anything sex- or attraction-related. 

These are bad too, but would they be so bad, if not for the vulnerability that underlines everything nights push onto him? He never wanted that kind of exposure, nevermind longed for it, but… 

There was no fictional cinematography for almost a century after the Last Arrow, and one of his favourite movie-directing periods of all time was created afterwards, on the brink of the first and second centuries in space, when most of the human race has been so exhausted they didn’t have the power to blame each other, and the first movies afterwards were bare and honest, fresh-out-of-catastrophe. They were about people, separated on different Arrows, then on different planets; about people, born on that one Arrow — Arrow 11 — that has been lost, who knows how, and has been floating through space for fourteen years, and then appeared, a hyperdrive suddenly active, between Eden-6 and Eden-7, the entire population of Eastern Europe, back into time again. About being terrifyingly alive and not alone. About restoration and reconciliation and resolution to not get into the same shit again. 

They did fall into it, of course, but before they did, they made the best movies. Katagawa grimaces, looking at Rhys’ face in profile, somewhere in the middle of establishing a communication network on Atlas, _I should have watched other things, shouldn’t I?_

Delusions. He has so many. He still doesn’t find a single instance where Rhys’ travelled somewhere for longer than a few days — to establish little partnership with Jacobs, to fly out to one of Edens’ universities, to go for Pandora. Of course, maybe that’s one of the things his tech missed, but— Jenna seemed surprised, too. 

His communicator beeps.

 **Zhou Wei** : _are u off?_

 **Zhou Wei** : _send pics of you resting_

Katagawa sends her a picture of three kabocha lying on his counter. 

**Zhou Wei** : _i’m so proud of you_

**29**

On the fourth day of his vacation, Yuko sets up a conference call with Tatsuke and Takeshi, with video-connection. 

“Let’s do it,” Yuko says, their back straight and tense. “You’ll take control of the mission. At the same time, Takeshi-kun, Amaya-chan, and Asashi, who’s just arrived on Partali, will catch and restrain the siren. I assume you have a plan?” 

Katagawa has a plan. 

The old ML facility that is already attacked leaves another ten locations they can hit. He’s worked under the _assumption_ Rhys would want to place the Vault Key in places where he’s could access it easily, but it would be difficult for others. It wouldn’t be in the safe or locked storage, because isolated things like that are always on the top of hit-list. It wouldn’t be a place he visits often, neither a place he visits rarely. 

It should be something perfectly ordinary; mundane is vast, and it’s hard for the enemy to figure out _which_ of casual locations it would be without making a move. So among the ten locations, there are shield manufacturing centers, supply storages where almost no one works, R&D labs Rhys visits the most, where most people work remotely or in sprint projects, and a shooting range in the list. Supply storage with Invisibility-induced materials is on top; it’s convenient to hide something and hard to get into without clearance. 

Assumptions are not enough, but, if anything, the destruction will drive Rhys back to the headquarters. He conveys the attack plan. 

Yuko says there’ll be twenty people, two for each location and two for getting away detour. He proposes to re-install the listeners on ID scanners.

“Their movements are too chaotic to do that,” Tatsuke says, tech support for the operation. “Besides, after the last attack, they’re moved beyond using fingerprints and iris scans, and now there are voice-as-biomarker and vital signs tech for signature identification. It’d take a lot to own these: they aren’t kept in any connected storage, as far as we know, because—” 

“Privacy reasons,” Katagawa mutters, “Right. Next option: if after we’ve passed the property layer and explode a little gas, it will turn off standby power generators and the backup won’t activate for five-ten minutes because of emergency protocol. That can be used to look around and leave.” 

“Why is it always gas with you,” Tatsuke groans. “Ten minutes aren’t enough.” 

“Give me more people and it will be,” Katagawa replies. 

“Two people per location are fine, we got Eridium scanners from Division 3,” Yuko says, getting a cup to their lips. “What is the probability of success, Junior?” 

“Low,” Katagawa says, looking at the screen, instead of giving percentages like he usually does. Yuko sighs. Amaya looks up from her tablet beside Takeshi and gives him a long, unreadable look, face blank. 

“Do you think the incident will get on his nerves and he’ll slip?” Tatsuke asks. 

“No,” Katagawa says, “I don’t even think he’ll be more drawn to a… personal contact afterwards. I’ll need more time for that. Consider this—” 

“An experiment?” Takeshi supplies softly, and Katagawa’s grateful he didn’t say “penetration test”. Tatsuke laughs, short, and looks somewhere behind her camera. 

“Yes,” Katagawa says. 

“Well, it’s better than nothing. And you said low, not none, so,” Takeshi says, “so there’s a chance—” 

“Alright,” Yuko says. “I need to be elsewhere right now. Junior, Tatsuke-chan will connect you to the troops,” they look at the camera briefly, eyes black in the light of the screen. “Do your best.” 

“I will,” Katagawa replies. 

“If young Atlas will— continue to develop affections for you, we’ll introduce you to the second major objective for your mission,” they say. 

Katagawa carefully keeps his face neutral. Gods, movement data. He constantly forgets about it. “Of course, Yuko-san,” he replies. 

The conference call ends. 

* 

They find a V-shaped object that glows with Eridium in the storage with raw materials for invisibility cloaks. 

Katagawa almost gasps, looking at it through the camera on the head of Simmons. Jarvis, Simmon’s partner, lets out a sharp breath for him. 

Highest probability. Katagawa feels unsteady. 

“Retreat,” he murmurs in the comm, and they go away from the premises. The siren wails. Katagawa blinks at the screen. There are too many variables beyond their control to believe in such easy success—he’s proven right a few minutes later. 

They find another two glowing stones with an embedded Eridium layer in an R&D lab that works on bullets that split into four and in never-used-locker on the shooting range. The shooting range was last on the list before the ML building, just a bold-assumption, he’s never seen Rhys shooting in Atlas — but, on Pandora… He suggested he kept the habit. 

They find more. They find nine Vault Keys—everywhere, except protective equipment R&D lab in the small building attached to the headquarters. 

“Attack four random buildings and low-risk zones of the HQ with the fire-damage explosions,” he says in the comm after “successful” groups relocate beyond the edge of the compound. There’s a chorus of agreement. “Heathrow, find a place to make a burner on.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Don’t—” 

“Katagawa-san,” says the voice from another line. Team 4, unsuccessful. “I think Katagawa-san needs to see this. Before the operation, we’ve put high-sensitivity readers on the perimeter of the compound, they’re able to detect—

“Eridium-specific wavelengths on the large distances, I know,” he replies. 

“Sharing the real-time scan results,” they say. 

Katagawa raises his head and gestures to make the hologram bigger, his eyes widening. Atlas’ compound is _laced_ with Eridium traces, a glowing abstract painting a layer above familiar streets, dozens of nodes intertwined. Lines go outside of it, too, he sees the unnatural cuts right where the readers are installed. There are bundles in the Atlas’ HQ, too: one in Rhys’ apartment, one — in the cafeteria, and even one in the resting space near the Marketing & PR office; more of them — where three Maiwan’s groups are going to leave the area.

“Do you think one of them is real?” 

Katagawa laughs, shortly. Highly probable locations. Highly improbable locations. 

“There’s a possibility. Send me the data,” he looks at the map and feels his breaths hitching in the throat. Something near him explodes—didn’t he _ask_ them to not attack apartment complexes? He looks at the bird-view of Atlas’ compound again, and sees another four bundles, in each complex. In his, too. _Oh my god, Rhys,_ he thinks, trying to be angry about it. He shakes his head and stops the sharing. “What’s your name?” 

“Takemoto Shion. I’m glad to work with Katagawa-san, I—” she stumbles, her voice getting quieter. “I thought, em—” 

“Sir,” Heathrow interrupts on another line. “What do you want to write?” 

“Ah,” Katagawa smiles. 

*

When the troops have withdrawn, Yuko calls him. 

“Soooo, that happened,” Katagawa says over the sound of the shouting siren. “I’m not sure what to say.” 

“You don’t need to say anything, it’s… It’s exactly like you’ve predicted, isn’t it?” Yuko sighs. It’s not what he’s predicted _at all_. “The mission on Parteli has been… more successful. We have Amara, and we are going to invite Calypso siblings to test the objects we’ve acquired. Amara doesn’t seem particularly cooperative.” 

“Are you using restraints from D3, too?” Yuko hums in assents. Katagawa smiles. He’s helped develop Eridium-controlling devices after he came back from university and Maliwan using products he’s helped create... That must feel good. Gratifying. He doesn’t feel anything, except for bewilderment. “Okay. I’m gonna go, then.” 

“Go,” Yuko says, and there’s a smile in her voice, too. “Good luck, little brother.” 

“Good luck to you, too,” Katagawa sees the dust behind his window finally settling. They’ve exploded the first few stories of a third apartment complex. 

*****

He arrives at HQ twenty minutes later. It’s dark here, darker than usual, the smoke from explosions risen up, a grey shadow above the neon signboards and street lights. Team 11 threw the medium-impact bombs all over the place; nothing inside has been attacked, but windows on the front side of the stella crumbled inside. It smells like destruction here; like a mess that could have been avoided, if he didn’t— underestimate his opponent. 

“What are you doing here?” asks Jenna; he shoots a brief glance on the HQ again; the BDD office windows, sure. Jenna wears a large, chunky-knit yellow cardigan and her hair is a mess; there’s a mini-parachute on her back. She looks shaken, and her hands tremble but not frightened. 

“I was worried. You’re okay? Where—” 

“Ah, they’ve gone home, only the department heads are here,” she nods at Zhou Wei, who sits on the porch of one of the buildings intact, a closed cafe called Foxglove, and looks, her brows furrowed, at her tablet. Jenna shrugs and pulls her sleeves to cover her hands. 

“Hey,” he takes off his coat and covers her shoulders, “it’s okay.” 

“Yeah,” Jenna grins at him, getting deeper into his coat, “I’m also fancy now. I don’t suppose people wear it _on_ the parachute, though. Ugh,” she sighs and leans onto him. Katagawa folds an uncertain hand around her shoulders; he feels the harness under the fabric and hums, curious. “Ahh,” Jenna says, elbowing him in _I got it_ way. “It’s not the first time I’m using these, you know. Two years ago, employee security training was much tougher than now—now, you just look at the presentation and sign the document. When Rhys installed the ceiling protection, we blew some shit up to test it. We had so much fun. People’s faces! Middle of the day, a loud BOOM!!! and then the whole business dev, marketing, and— we had one of the transportation startups on the floor, they’re on Pandora now— all of us are landing on the street. Invisible. Rhys tried to keep it together, but then one girl under Gabi— Joanne? Jess? can’t remember, — she was one of the people who led the training —has gotten in front of some guy who’s just exited Foxglove, elaborate latte and stuff… She uncloaked herself and was like “You’re done well. Your sins are forgiven.” Jenna laughs. They’re using cloaking for evacuation; he vaguely remembers something about it from instructional training, but… He glances around. His attention lately is extremely selective. “Boss fucking lost it, I swear I’ve never seen him laugh so hard—” she sighs and turns away to look at the people coming from around headquarters. He stills, following her gaze. “Not so fun now, isn’t it? I wonder who— Who is—?” 

“Jenna,” he murmurs, looking at two figures, Rhys and Gabi, separated from the people flow, talking with their heads close. “When did Rhys come back?” 

“Ten or so minutes before you. That’s why I’m freezing my ass here,” he feels Jenna shrugs. Katagawa lets his hand fall from her shoulders and makes an unconscious step back. 

“Hey, are you—” 

Rhys looks concerned, but there is a lightness to his steps, airy and bright, a contrast to the years of kept footage Katagawa’s just binged through. He wears jeans and a green turtleneck, and there’s calm in the way he talks, and Katagawa’s body gets— _afraid_ of him. 

Katagawa misses first beats, first too-deep inhales, and he’s in it, washed over with panic. It’s like drowning; like the smoke has been poisonous and got to him; his whole body is a container for the fastened heartbeat and there’s nothing else. 

It takes everything to look away from Rhys, and look at Gaby, her strict posture and black jacket and animated gestures. He thinks if he’ll stop breathing he’ll die, but it’s hard to inhale properly, everything is surface-levelled, shallowed, bleak, even the blood rushing in his ears; he remembers that state: his mind makes his body scared, he remembers: the first step to get rid of a panic attack is to acknowledge the panic attack. It’s another surface thought. 

_It’s been five years_ , his consciousness circles around the thought, five years since a minute and a half video, frightened guy with cybernetic hand, ripped-off and laying on the floor, drops of blood on the sleeve, _what happened to you._ Five years since he saw Rhys fainting in ruins. 

Should have watched other things. 

Rhys changed so much. _Helios fell and led me here_ , Katagawa thinks, trembling, _and you—_

He can barely breathe through the frantic throbbing in his chest: he’ll die, he’ll die right here, in the crowd in front of the cafe called Foxglove with a painted **DEATH TO VAULT THIEVES!!! COV** burner on the window, his order. He’ll die, remembering the network of glowing Eridian stones, splashes of illuminance over the map, little honeypots. 

Gabi Lateef walks away, and Katagawa still looks at the empty place she’s left, the small, raged inhales aren’t enough to get rid of the terror; they’ve been played. _It’s not us who did the experiment_ , he thinks, feeling his vision blurring, _it’s you._

 _Highly probable locations._ He breathes in, or tries to; he wants to feel the enthusiasm, the thrill of the game, something — it’s clever and he loves clever, but all he can feel is the terror of being anticipated by Rhys. It feels like one of his dreams, worn backwards. A dark street, a spyfly following Rhys’ steps, a rush of movement, turning back; when their eyes meet, his — on the other side of the screens, Rhys’ on the street, discovering being followed. In dreams, Katagawa is always ready; always excited. This, he thinks, in a half-hearted attempt to make his lungs work properly and burning with the smallest gulps of oxygen, isn’t exciting at all. Is that because it’s real? 

Katagawa doesn’t see anything; maybe he’s closed his eyes; maybe he’s crying though he knows it’s hard to cry in a panic. He needs to ground himself, to come back, but there is only his rattling, irregular breathing, the absence of awareness about his body, he has usually counted things around him, but there’s nothing to count, he can’t _see,_ he barely breathes. He needs to remember he’s safe, but the thought about safety makes it worse because safety is Maliwan and he’s failing, failing them. His heart wants to trash his chest; he imagines broken ribs going through his flash, damaging his organs. _Good luck, little brother._

 _Tell me what you feel around you,_ he remembers and tries to feel something except for what his mind feeds to him. He can’t even tell if he’s standing, but when his knees buckle he supposes he did stand; he doesn’t fall; there’s pressure on his forearm. Is that — a touch? A grip? It’s familiar in the context; Naoko used to do that, when— Another touch, on the small of his back. A palm? He wants to cough, and he does, but it’s harder afterwards like he skipped through too many breathing cycles, and his heart beats faster. 

He’s— walking? He doesn’t feel that his legs are doing something, but he does, as it seems, he is walking, there’s more air in front of his face now, more air to try to breathe and fail to. Then, he is sat: points of pressure on his back, on his shoulders, on his back again. The absence of volition scares him into coughs again; they are soundless. His throat feels sore; he stops coughing and stills, among the white noise. He tries to feel his palms, tries to feel the surface he’s sitting on. Is it cold? It must be cold. 

Something repetitive gets through his furious heartbeats, he can’t— can’t decipher it, it’s too long, swallowed too fast by the suddenly deafening sound of his harsh breathing. He is cold, he knows that from the hot pressure on the back of his hand, what— 

“Tetsu,” he hears, an interruption to silence in his twisted breathing cycle. “Tetsu.” 

It’s a calling, familiar and strange at the same time. He blinks, feeling another cough fit stiffening in his throat, feeling hot pressure on his hand, freezing from sitting on the cold surface, feeling cold sweat on his palms, down his spine. 

“Do what I say, okay?” he hears, along with more pressure on his palm. Katagawa stops breathing, and pressures back, in some resemblance of coherency. “Inhale.” 

Katagawa does. 

*

He dreams about the evening he’s found out his mother left, they’ve told him about it in passing, _your mother left,_ and then _I wonder how Hyperion will react to the crisis,_ and Naoko had an angry expression on her face and said: _it’s like they’re the same things._ They were six, but he didn’t get a lot of stuff Naoko liked to talk about, and her being upset that day has been one of them. 

He dreams about the legends about the Vaults, so different from what he heard about from his mother. She liked Buddhist legends and Zen koans and numerous monogatari; stories about immortals, stories about aswangs, stories about scary and holy and funny things. 

Never post-Melting legends. He’s never asked why. 

He got his answers from history lessons: they lived there, right in the cycle of myth development. Centuries of reconciliation ended with the discovery of the Vaults and got pushed to the edges of every planet after the start of Eridium mining; that: the return to what’s destroyed the old Earth what was made Nobuo Katagawa found Maliwan. 

The legends about unthinkable power and eternal glory seemed like a joke, but Vault Hunters continued their raids, and corporations kept fighting for resources, and Maliwan grew, standing aside, a place for those who were driven out of planets like Pandora with madness and solitude. 

He dreams about that one CTF contest they had with Takeshi before Katagawa went to Eden-8. Takeshi has been obsessed with programming since, as it seemed, he was born, and has been brilliant in bending rules of the system he’s tried to infiltrate. Katagawa has been indifferent to engineering, but hacking has been fun, and he did try learning it just to do something, and instead of bending the system he tried to find weak links in it and go through them or exploit them to compromise the system. (Takeshi has always left them for Katagawa to play with, even though he could create a system Katagawa wouldn’t be able to crack; when Katagawa asked why, he said they’re doing it for fun, not because Takeshi needs to teach him, and that was — a new concept.) After the competition, they discussed the Vaults, and Katagawa asked if there’s a possibility Maliwan would be interested in hunting. Takeshi said: “Father will never risk his people like that. Not with Helios on the board.” 

Now, Helios hasn’t been on board, isn’t it? His mother said there was a power in legends, old and new: they shape the way people see the world; offer them an additional framework to build their life; add meaning. 

A year ago, he found out Maliwan made the deal with Calypso siblings - God knows when. Their relationships were nothing like between him and his siblings, and they’ve wanted the Vault. Vaults. Maliwan also started wanting the Vaults, so they’ve got introduced, attempting to build a beneficial partnership. 

It’s about control, Katagawa understood; about protection; about owning all the red buttons. It made perfect sense for Maliwan to want Vaults. Vaults were power; Maliwan couldn’t let it fall in the wrong hands. They couldn’t afford it anymore, not after Hyperion; Helios falling was a good thing. Maliwan would come together as one where Helios stood and fix everything Handsome Jack has broken. 

It’s about legends, too, Katagawa thinks, looking at Helios, falling from the sky. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s been on Pandora— maybe after Eden-8, when Isaako-san and he— 

The picture switches to his mother standing among the broken crypto preservation cameras in the lab on the M’s HQ first level, furious, holsters around her hips. 

_Abandonment issues_ , he remembers, and she snarls at him, hearing his thoughts. He feels small under her angry gaze. 

_Who pissed you off_ , Katagawa asks without opening his mouth, and—

There’s a flash of light, and they’re in his room on M, looking out of the window: there’s a mountain, a bright white star shining above its highest peak. The slope he’s looking at is deep bright blue, with stripes of gold in the cracks, and there are figures falling, dropped beyond the edge of divinity for drinking forbidden wine. He remembers her saying it’s hard to be a passionate person, someone who holds what they have and fears letting go, madly. 

“I remember that one,” he says, looking at his mom. She doesn’t have weapons on her now, wearing her usual grey trousers and white blouse instead of Maliwan’s intelligence department uniform. She smiles. 

She lays a hand on his shoulder, it’s— a weird thing, the picture his mind is conjuring; weird feeling, being higher than her. “Don’t be scared.” 

“Mom—” 

“ _We have to wipe them out before they do, aren’t we?_ ” she says and turns his head to the mountain. She holds him by his brand. It burns. 

* 

He wakes up with a dry gasp, to the arrangement of flowers he doesn’t know the name of. Note near them says, turned to face his pillow: _Get better and come to work. And DON’T think we DON’T KNOW!!! bd._

He notes he’s in his flat, not at the hospital wing, as he’s initially assumed, and something akin to panic shifts in him before he remembers he ran a wipe-out algorithm when he’s left to see the damage to the HQs. He props up on the elbows and takes a glass of water from the drawer when he hears a cough coming from his right side. 

“I told doctors you don’t like hospitals,” says Rhys who’s sitting on the sofa with a hologram glowing at his face, the bright, weird cyan of his ECHO made brighter. “Wendy threw a laaarge fit. No one shouted at me for a long time - I think I even felt nostalgic.” 

_How do you know I—,_ Katagawa thinks, looking at him properly. He wears the same clothes and looks just a tiny bit more tired than— Katagawa looks at his comm — an hour and a half ago. Katagawa takes a few sips from his glass and puts it on the table. He doesn’t think he ever has _fainted_ from panic, at least in his adulthood. 

“What are you doing here, buddy,” Katagawa asks. It sounds hoarse. 

“Your team asked me to bring you flowers since they know—” Rhys makes an expressive face, “—that we’re friends and that I have access to your apartment. I thought I might as well work here.” 

“I don’t even know where to start unpacking that sentence,” Katagawa murmurs, looking at him curiously. There’s none of the terror; remembering it feels like walking on the thin line, but it’s things as usual, a non-issue. 

“You can just— lie there and be calm, how ‘bout that?” Rhys asks, turning his ECHO off and looking at him. 

“Do you have keys to all apartments?” Katagawa asks quietly. “Maybe there’s surveillance, too? Are you _watching me?”_

“You didn’t read the housing contract properly, did you?” 

Katagawa read the housing contract as thoroughly as he could. The only company who’s watching this flat is Maliwan, and now every recording is off, due to wipe-out protocol. 

“You were too distracting,” he murmurs, grinning in Rhys’ face. Rhys tells him to shut up. “Really? That’s all you’ve got?” 

“I don’t have the emotional capacity for quarrelling. A quarter of my company has been blown up, so yes. I think “shut up” is all you’re getting,” Rhys says. 

“So cruel,” replies Katagawa, aiming for moping, “it’s about the sixth, by the way.” 

“It’s really, really not the point,” says Rhys, a barely noticeable underline in his voice. Katagawa finds it wonderful; on the other hand, everything’s wonderful in comparison to his mind losing its shit from feeling the reality of the situation. What’s true is already so. He doesn’t know why he got so worked up. 

_Are you scared, Rhys_ , thinks Katagawa, searching his face, as he’s coming closer. 

“How are you feeling?” 

“I’m fine,” Katagawa smiles. 

“That’s debatable. Wendy sent you treatment recommendations, check them out. If you continue feeling—” Rhys smiles, flat, “bad, prolong your vacation. After getting back, you can work part-time. Wendy’s theory is that you present the symptoms of burnout.” 

Katagawa laughs. This is absurd. He wonders if Rhys feels defeated seeing his employee with such symptoms. “What’s your theory?” 

“Don’t have one, I’m not a doctor,” murmurs Rhys, sitting on the edge of his bed. Katagawa rolls closer to him, puts a palm under his chin, looking up. “Did this happen before?” 

“When I was in college,” Katagawa replies, and takes him by the wrist of the prosthesis, a cold metal pleasant to the skin, indicating this conversation is over. He asks, coy, “how was _your_ vacation?” 

Rhys gives him a wry, but kind smile, and opens his mouth to answer, but his cybernetic hand slips, fast, from Katagawa’s hold, and closes around Katagawa’s neck in the honest-to-got stronghold, _hard_ and painful. 

Katagawa blinks, unable to keep his body from trying to gulp a few breaths, which makes things worse: the pressure on the artery, the pain, a dark, deep sensation of oxygen loss that makes him hard; edges of vision blurring around Rhys’ shocked face. 

_What._

The cognition kicks in a brief moment of clarity; his eyes drop lower where Rhys tries to—stop his right hand from strangling Katagawa with his left, tense muscles and exertion. 

Katagawa relaxes his throat to let the metal fall deeper in his neck and get a lip-reading of _fuck_ and _stop,_ his hearing filled with rushing heartbeats. He wants to smile at the warm fog of pain in his mind. 

He doesn’t notice the hold relaxing around his throat until his lungs seize up, rise to the chance to breathe; he makes the first small inhale, barely there, a rush of warm air tingling his throat. Rhys’ hand is still lying on his neck; it’s dizzying. 

“—fuck, I’m sorry, I don’t— I don’t know what happened, shit, are you okay?” 

“I’m fairly sure these things need to be negotiated,” Katagawa says, hoarse, smiling at him, barely opening his mouth to talk. Rhys’ ECHO lense seems bleaker — perhaps, an aftereffect of asphyxiation, and there's a guilty expression Katagawa hates on his face. “I’m fine.” His tongue feels heavy. “Good vacation, then?” 

Rhys takes his hand from Katagawa’s neck. It’s so hard not to follow it. “I don’t do vacation.” 

“Maybe if you would, you wouldn’t try to kill your co-workers. I’m not a doctor either, but it’s an obvious sign of stress,” Katagawa says, breathing in more fully. He sits up in the bed, dizzy, his body swaying from side to side. He doesn’t want to talk about Rhys’ tech assumably going out of control. He blinks at Rhys. “You look good,” he says and watches Rhys flush through struggling to keep his eyes open. Is he serious? “Look like you had— some time to relax. You didn’t take some of those fancy corporate yoga-retreats for posh CEOs? Because if you did, it’s ov—”

“Stop with your nonsense,” Rhys tells him, laughing awkwardly. “I. I had some. Time to relax, yeah, among— other things. Felt weird.” 

“I won’t tell anyone,” Katagawa whispers and closes his eyes. “My lips are sealed.” 

“I can see that.” 

Katagawa squints at him. “I can’t believe you, joking around the man you’ve almost murdered. What were you doing on that trip of yours, learning how to do comedy?” He feels sleepy and quiet. Symptoms of burnout. What a joke. 

“What do you mean, learning? Humility is the first test of mastery.” 

Katagawa yawns, surprised he’s managed to pull his hand up to cover his mouth. “Right, right. Okay,” he opens one eye to peek at Rhys’ expression and sighs, pleased with Rhys’ smile. He’s sure there’s something more - there’s no way Rhys’ was _relaxing_ all three weeks, but he really wants to sleep, too. “I’m sure you have some matters to attend to, buddy, don’t let my almost-dead-body slow you down.” 

“Suffered a lot, did you?” Rhys asks, mocking, and Katagawa hears him standing up from his bed. 

“I mean, I just had a near-death experience,” Katagawa says and lets another bubble of bullshit out, “caused by my boss. A common thing for this world, but I didn’t expect that from _him_ , you know? I thought… He seemed so kind... I don’t even—” 

“Oh god, Katagawa, enough, I’m leaving,” Rhys’ already near the door, his voice exasperated, “Let me know when you’re feeling better, okay?” 

“‘kay,” Katagawa says. He falls asleep again, thinking about their first kiss: dark hotel room, illuminated with neon, the taste of sweet white wine, the hand on his nape. 

*****

Next morning, he wakes up at his usual 0630, discovering that he slept through a day. In the bathroom, he stares at the bruises on his neck: almost black point of Rhys’ thumb on the right side of his throat, four circles on the right, connected with a vague dark-blue line. Impressive strength. Such a good vacation. 

He makes fried eggs and finishes the last can of natto, glancing at the flowers near his bed. So weird. Last time he’s received flowers has been on Eden-8, because his housemate John Lualhati — _Jonny_ , said his bartender badge when they met, _cock tail master_ ; that was their first argument: their different views on the etymology of the word “cocktail.” He was one of the most beautiful men Katagawa’s ever seen) — want to comfort him after a sad, sad date where Katagawa tried to figure out the whole sex thing with three kakitsubata flowers, some hard-to-digest snacks and beer. 

This arrangement isn’t blue; yellow-and-white, they look like daisies, but Katagawa isn’t sure which ones. 

When he turns off the heating and puts the eggs and beans in the bowl, there’s an incoming call from Tatsuke. 

“We checked a half of the collected keys,” she says quietly, “went from the top; all five are fakes.” 

“How are the Calypso?” Katagawa asks, putting the filter on the glass. 

“I don’t know, Souta and Isaako-san deal with them.” She sounds tired, more tired than on their videoconference. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Fine. I— really need to catch up on sleep, I guess.” 

Katagawa rubs his neck in contemplation and pours boiled water on coffee in the filter. “The keys, I. I don’t think they’re on Promethea.” 

His panic attack made him rethink some things — the records he watched, for that matter; things that weren’t of his initial interests and his greed. 

“But— Are you sure? I would think he’d place them in proximity…” 

“Me too, and I don’t think I was right,” Katagawa says, looking at the coffee dripping in the glass. _Since they know we’re friends. I know it offends you but you’ve assumed._ “I think someone else has it. One of his friends. He has friends, you know.” 

“Whoa,” Tatsuke says, dry, but finally amused, “what a fucker.” 

“I know, right?” 

“Yeah. Well,” she yawns again, and it sounds— Katagawa can’t think about it. “Let me know if you have any insights. Yuko-san is— sick. I’m your contact now.”

“Uh-huh,” Katagawa says. 

He looks at the comm. The screen indicates that the call is ended. It’s still early morning. 

* 

He messages Rhys after a run, spending half-an-hour in the gym and finding an unfortunately empty bottle of moisturizer in his bathroom. He had better days. 

**loser spy** : _hi :) it’s katagawa. i’m fine._

**Rhys** : _Great. How are you feeling?_

 **Katagawa** : _after all we’ve been through. so dry._

 **loser spy** : _i’ve just told you i’m fine._

 **he enjoyed it, didn’t he** : _or. perhaps you mean something specific?_

 **Rhys:** _I’m doing speech-to-text. Handling a coding issue._

 **Rhys** : _Yes, for instance: your burnout, your panic attacks, and your neck._

 **Daddy Hates You:** _some really tough code, yeah? ;)_

 **Rhys** : _Yes. Sssssss._

 **Katagawa** : _so. my neck is fine. my burnout doesn’t exist, so it’s probably fine too. my panic attacks are rare. so don’t worry about them._

 **Rhys** : _Duck! Don’t bullshit me._

 **cumcake, please be reasonable:** _i do not._

 ***cupcake** : _i’m really fine, boss._

 **you’re the worst:** _i didn’t have any for more than 10 years. i’m pretty sure they won’t be a problem now._

 **Rhys** : _Nice record._

 **Rhysie, stop this:** _why thank you :) i don’t often hear people complimenting my mental health_

 **Rhys** : _I’m sure there is a perfect explanation for this._

 **this is torture** : _sassy_

 **Rhys** : _Your team asked you to come to the office if you are up to it and feel okay. Today. You would know that if you had actually read your group chat. If you’re going to, message me before. Hand._

 **Katagawa** : _k. good luck with your coding thing_

 **thanks god** : _notice how i didn’t ask why should i message YOU, not the folks_

 **Rhys:** _I noticed._

 **Clingy Man** : _good :)_

*

Recurrent sudden jolts of dizziness in Katagawa’s ribs makes him skip the second coffee and pass the energy drink in the hall’s vending machine. For the first time since he came here, he thinks Atlas’ headquarters reminds him of Eden-8 main campus: vast spaces, warm colours, cliques of people going from one coffee machine to another. In the elevator to the sixth floor, he fixes his scarf covering the bruises and avoids his reflection’s eyes. 

The door to the Marketing office is opened, and he nods to Hannah’s smile; there’s a hickey above the white collar of her blouse, and Katagawa almost smiles at it. 

The rush of Jenna’s big red hair and grabby hands assaults him when he opens the BDD office and he stands there like a statue, hugged. Kim coughs, and he is grateful for it. Jenna leans back—he notices his coat on the back of his chair.

“You,” she digs the pointer in his chest. “Do you have _any idea_ how you’ve scared me? One minute you’re standing there in I Support My Boss mode, and the next one— what? What _was_ that? Wendy said you didn’t—” Jenna takes a breath, apparently remembering about patient confidentiality policies,” —Wendy said you’re _exhausted_ . Why did you take a vacation, to get more tired?! You have to _stop_ ,” Katagawa opens his mouth to say he’s fine and he doesn’t actually need to do anything." _Sush_. I’m not hearing it. You’ve gotta rest, Katagawa. I’m not—” 

Katagawa turns to look over her shoulders and makes a face at Kim. 

“Jenna, that’s enough,” she says in her casual unimpressed tone. Katagawa could kiss her. “Didn’t you have a point?” 

“The point is,” Jenna starts, “the point is. We called your sister. After your attack. She’s quite worried, you know. About you working yourself into the early grave.” 

“Not that early,” Katagawa says because there’s no coherent thought in his head. Kim draws a line through her neck and mouths: _don’t do that._ “What. My sister?” 

“Oh my god, I— I can’t do this, Rhys— _Rhys—_ Deal with it, will you, I’m too infuriated to talk."

Rhys is here? Very cool. Katagawa tries to re-assemble his mind in a way that will help him understand how the hell his colleagues from Atlas called— Ah. Kim’s suspicions. She meets his eyes and shrugs. 

"Just for the record, I was totally against it,” Rhys starts, appearing moving from the kitchen zone to Katagawa’s table on Katagawa’s office chair. Katagawa applies incredible efforts to not raising his eyebrows; Rhys sits behind his workstation like he owns it, which he does, but it still scratches unpleasantly. Monstera sits there, sympathetic. There are a cake and two packages of— saison, _oh god,_ on his table, too. _What._ They surely didn’t invite him to the _office party_ . Rhys’ meets his eyes, and Katagawa hopes _are you fucking kidding me_ is readable on his face; from how Rhys smiles, private and _evil,_ it is. He continues in a kind, deceptive tone, “Against calling your sister.” 

_Was you?_ Katagawa thinks. 

“Yeah, that’s because both of you are crazy workaholics. You’re lucky we don’t know how to contact _your_ family,” Jenna says, disdainful, and goes to Katagawa’s table to open saison. 

“It has nothing to do with luck,” Rhys smiles. Does anybody apart from him recognize the thick waves of smugness radiating from him? 

“What’s happening here?” Katagawa murmurs to Kim’s side. 

“Your birthday,” Kim replies. “There is cake.” 

“Cake,” Katagawa repeats. “I can see that.” 

_I need to leave,_ Katagawa thinks. _I have to meet someone other than these crazy people._

“Take this, Wendy told you’re allowed one,” Jenna says, putting a bottle of saison in his hand. He takes it, because what choice does he have? He hates the stuff. Then, Jenna squeaks, looking at him, and _fixes his scarf._ “How are you so handsome even when you’re overworked?” 

“Jen,” Rhys’ voice says. Katagawa looks up at him and does raise an eyebrow. Rhys looks away. 

“Right, soo. Katagawa!” Jenna steps back and takes her saison. “As you know, the better life begins after the line of thirties—” 

“—he’s 29.”

“—and today, you are a step closer!” 

George laughs from his cubicle near the bookshelf and stands up to get closer. “Are you always embarrassing people when they get older? Should I prepare for that—” 

“You have no taste for celebrations,” Jenna snorts. 

“—and for shouting, right?” 

“This was a concern! I’m concerned!” 

“Folks,” Rhys says, quiet, and everyone stops talking. Katagawa looks at him again and is glad he doesn’t stand up from his chair, doesn’t make any move to get closer, because Rhys _smiles_ at him, in a small, private way, briefly, and Katagawa’s chest is hollow. He wants to store this smile inside of it, along with all the things Rhys is. Let them make his noisy mind quiet, like a hand on his neck. “Happy birthday, Katagawa,” Rhys says and raises the bottle, and everyone moves to him to make a _click,_ and Katagawa does, too. 

“Thanks,” he says and Jenna bumps his shoulder and starts talking about something Katagawa can’t process. He can’t process anything, except: 

Rhys’ eyes don’t leave him all evening. It feels like a noose. 

*

He makes conversation without engaging in it for about an hour, thanks everyone after coming up with the fatigue excuse and gets out of the building with the speed he’s never walked on this planet. He almost runs past the sign Heathrow put on the window, the dark red of it. He spends half-an-hour in the wellness shop, choosing a moisturizer. Back in the apartment, he scrolls through the list of books he wants to read, back and forth, not choosing anything, just letting the symptoms blur in the unintelligible mess. Seems fitting for his state of mind. He could go make use of Atlas’ training facilities or a shooting range or _else_ , to let out some steam and calm down, but it’s too much work on his own, and he doesn’t want that now. 

He logs in into one of the dating apps on his com and chooses the profile of a good-looking man who is not, to his knowledge, his colleague. He doesn’t put product in his hair for a change. 

They meet in the bar, the new one. Katagawa drinks cold green tea while the man mouths on the blue liquid in the high glass. Katagawa tries not to look at it and not smell it; his drinking choices aside, the man — Sam — seems okay. 

A professor on an expedition to Aquator, Sam catches a break on Promethea, a bit tired of his colleagues, and tells him he’d like to build some sort of tourist business on one of the Aquator’s islands. Katagawa likes the idea: tourist business, the ocean. 

It’d be better if he did that, instead of stalking Hyperion's middle manager for the better part of his twentieth. He’s sure he could do a better job for the family if not for it. 

Sam is tall and blond and he looks like a person from Rumi’s artbook World War II propaganda posters, american section, and smells pine in the cold air which is the contrast to— no. Nope. Katagawa smiles, hearing Sam go on about classification of new-found species in the southern ocean of Aquator, and Sam notices he’s not listening and smiles at him, too. It’s calm and amused. Katagawa hopes he won’t say anything about his bruises, and he doesn’t. 

As an answering gift, Katagawa is as easy and obedient as it’s possible; he can’t go under, of course, but he feels warm and good enough in restraints to ask Sam, serious and quiet, to not take it as a challenge. Tell me something about yourself and I won’t, says Sam, smiling into his neck, finding the vaccine-shot scar on his forearm and contraceptive chip under it. Katagawa tells him today’s his birthday, and Sam calls him birthday boy the whole night. There are no ropemarks after on his thighs, but they ache anyway. That’s— satisfying. 

“The thing on your neck,” Sam says, when Katagawa’s goes to leave his place, spent and tired. Katagawa stills and turns back, raising his eyebrow. “It can’t be comfortable.” 

The bruises Rhys - Rhys’ malfunctioning hand - left on his neck, end in the place where the chameleon patch above his barcode starts. Marks of things that can — that have a potential to — strangle him. He doesn’t ask to elaborate. 

“It isn’t,” Katagawa answers. Sam smiles, as if understanding, and kisses his cheek before closing the door behind him, asking to call him sometime. “Sure,” Katagawa says to the empty hallway of the hotel. 

* 

When the elevator dings on the fourth floor, he sees Rhys—same dark shirt with rolled-up sleeves and jeans; Rhys _waves_ to him that Katagawa would read as playful if he was ready to read it in, like, any way. Rhys leans on the wall near the door of his apartment. Katagawa realizes his scarf is in his backpack - it’s late, and he didn’t expect to see anyone here. Didn’t expect to see Rhys, who watched him for his whole birthday party. His first reaction is the urge to turn away and run, but he’s filled with such slow, good content that it doesn’t pass through. 

“Have we planned a sleepover and I forgot? Hello,” asks Katagawa and stops when there are three steps and a door between them. Three steps and a door to his Atlas-provided apartment Rhys has keys from. It’s bad timing. His thighs hurt; he needs a shower to wash away the smell of the wrong forest out of himself; he needs to find the Vault Key which is not on Promethea and the only person who knows where is it around him has a key to his apartment, and still waits, patient and relaxed, shrugging to Katagawa starting their usual push and pull. “Right,” Katagawa opens the door and lets Rhys in. He walks past him and opens the window. He feels the sundown breathing into the back of his head with a crisp wind. “What’s up, buddy?” 

“I thought you might not want to be alone today,” Rhys says from where he’s settling into his armchair behind Katagawa. Katagawa hums, and Rhys lets out a quiet laugh on it - it’s pretty clear to him that Katagawa wasn’t, in fact, alone. He thinks he’s still flushed. He feels warm. “Your hair looks nice without the— product.” 

Katagawa shoots him a dirty look, thinking: _fuck you,_ and asks, “Do you want to stay?” 

Three steps, no door now. He turns to Rhys and sees the way bright blue paints the pale skin under his eye, his eyelashes are an ink contrast to it. Katagawa waits for continuation; for asking for permission. But Rhys doesn’t add _if you want me to._ Or _if it’s possible._ Or _if you’re up to it._ He just nods — and helps himself to the rocks and whiskey Katagawa keeps on the lower part of the coffee table. 

“I hope you brought your pyjama pants,” Katagawa says, unclipping the comm from his wrist, “I don’t have the spares.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Rhys says, “I usually sleep in boxers.” 

“Is it my birthday?” Katagawa asks the door to the bathroom, and Rhys throws a pillow from the chair into his back. He’s sure if he’d look at him right now, Rhys would be perfectly composed; CEOs and their poker faces. 

“Go take the shower,” Rhys tells him. Katagawa grins, and it’s almost - almost - not exhausted. 

*****

Katagawa leaves the shower and ignores Rhys' quiet laughs in favour of making tea. 

"Why am I not surprised you sleep in silk pants?" Rhys asks, and Katagawa notices a new few-finger absence in his whiskey bottle when he turns his head up from the teapot. _I have four pairs laying in the laundry basket because I’ve been coming in them for three weeks almost every morning since you’ve left,_ Katagawa thinks, looking at him, flushed and relaxed with his legs under him, leaning on the handle of armchair, chin propped on the elbow, _and now you’re here, flirting with me. You are so much trouble, young Atlas._

“It’s not a crime to like nice things,” he says instead of all this and sees Rhys' eyes travelling down his naked chest to his groin. Shower washed away some part of fatigue and Katagawa feels every part of his body Rhys' getting out of the pleasant afterglow laziness at Rhys’ attention.

Rhys doesn't look drunk - he doesn't think he has ever seen Rhys drunk recently, the last time was years ago, with Vaughn, a few days after Rhys and Sasha broke up. He’s got blurred back then, barely inside of his body with loneliness. 

It's honestly pathetic, the amount of power Katagawa spends to resist surrendering he longs for. It's not Rhys' fault, probably, but Katagawa wants to hurt him for it, wants to see him squirm away and finds he's unable to. 

He thought knowing what he wants would make things easier. 

Now he knows. An obvious, trivial truth that stirred under his skin quiet enough for him not to pay it any mind, five-years-old desire to be seen, twisted inwards now that it’s not possible; not with his mission, not with half a decade of stalking, not—just not. He watched Rhys as a movie, harbouring a thrill of anticipating his attention and never getting it. 

Now he watches Rhys get up and go turn the blinders on — a single line of red and orange divides the room in two, and go towards the table and discovers he can't move away, he's drilled into the ground of the housing facility forever, holding the weight of the way Rhys looks in his eyes, the weight of the red on his cheeks, of the pale blue of his lense that makes the flush look feverish. 

Today, an undercover version of him gets the attention. They’re not too different, of course, that would not be sustainable to maintain for so long, but it still stings. He can’t even loathe it properly like he can’t loathe anything Rhys has allowed close to himself. 

He can’t not lie to Rhys. 

Katagawa manages to regain motor function when Rhys comes close enough to kiss Katagawa - and Rhys looks down and shifts the way he’s centring himself, getting softer in his knees, and Katagawa catches this intent by the elbow and says: 

“No.” 

He hopes it doesn’t sound like ultimate no, and it apparently doesn’t, because Rhys lets out a laugh and a wince, and Katagawa kisses him on the bright line of the Promethean sun on his lips. The only reason to like this sun. 

He bruises the tender skin on the slope of his left shoulder, hard, the collar pulled away. Rhys scratches the naked skin of his back for it, four lines that come together. He deals with buttons of Rhys' shirt without taking his teeth away from his neck and by the time he pulls the last one, there’s a lake of red, spilled on Rhys’ skin. 

“Didn’t your date include dinner?” Rhys asks, and ah, Katagawa wants to eat him raw, along with his every insecurity. He steps closer, makes their chests touch, skin to skin, and leans to nose under his chin to make him raise his head, uncomfortable. 

Their lips are touching when Katagawa grins and says, very quietly, “Don’t be jealous, buddy.” He thrust his hips forward, an indication. Silk pants, benefits: conceal nothing. 

“I’m not—” Rhys breath hitches. 

“Wasn’t a date,” Katagawa murmurs into his lips. Rhys blinks at him, and what Katagawa wouldn’t give to know an ounce of his bright-eyed thoughts right now. Rhys heart thuds under his palm when he lays hand above on his skin. “And you’re my dinner.” 

“I can’t believe you’ve said it,” Rhys laughs. It’s a nervous sound. 

Katagawa moves him towards his bed and starts working on his zipper, careful about not touching his cock. Rhys grinds into his hand as soon as he’s out of — the boxers — as soon as they’re down on his thighs — and the back of his knees touch its edge. When he gets on the floor, Rhys lifts his legs for Katagawa to get his clothes off, and Katagawa looks at Rhys’ soft pale skin against the dark blue of his sheets, fragile bones of his knees. 

There are so many questions he would like answered. _Where have you been? What did you do? How’s the repair? Are you scared?_ Katagawa trails kisses from the dip of Rhys’ ilium, stops his mouth above the soft trimmed hairline; the head of Rhys’ cock bumps into his neck, and Katagawa smiles. 

“Lie down,” he says. Rhys does, Katagawa watches him from the floor, thin ankles wrapped into green socks with cactuses, and then circles the bed to get the lube from the drawer. Rhys’ hand catches his pants, hard grip on the soft fabric, and Katagawa’s spiralling, not sure how to look at Rhys on his bed. 

“If you edge me tonight, I’ll kill you,” Rhys says roughly in his patronising boss tone, which is very sweet of him. 

“Noted,” Katagawa allows himself a look. 

Rhys’ darker tattoo matches the colour of his sheets; that reminds him of ropes; reminds him of a network of Key-replicas, spread across Promethea surface. Katagawa sits near him and watches Rhys curling to him body, a micromovement, searching for touch, and he moves between Rhys’ long legs, gets down to brush his lips above Rhys’ nipple, gets his fingers to his hole. His mouth is full of Rhys’ smell. He wants more. His finger slides inside easily, and that’s. “You prepared,” he murmurs, adding another, getting them all the way in, curves them to touch Rhys’ prostate. 

Rhys tries to answer on an arch, tilting his hips and opening his legs wider. He should add more lube, and he does, and there’s a little thrill of imagining finger-fucking him like that, soft and yielding, but dry, biting his ass until Rhys screeches from pain. 

“Play with your ass a lot?” Katagawa asks while he’s at it, listening to Rhys’ hissing from cold of newly-added lubricant. 

“Nhg,” Rhys tries. Katagawa smears the rest of the lube between his cheeks, gets it on Rhys’ cock, and Rhys’ hips buckle into it. Rhys’ hole twitches, when Katagawa pets it with his dry fingers. He writhes on the bed, “hnh, ah— When I have time.” It’s breathless and whiney, and Katagawa kisses his stomach for it, near the pool of precome on it. _Not a lot, then_. Rhys shuts himself with a back of his hand when Katagawa fastens his fingers, just a bit, and he wishes he had restraints — he briefly thinks about using a tie but he’s not sure about whether his headboard will survive it. 

“I want to hear you,” Katagawa says, instead, and leaves his fingers there, creating a deep and full, but gentle constant press on Rhys’ prostate and gets him into his mouth. It’s a weird thing, the way Katagawa's mind goes lazy and dark at taste and scent, the weight of Rhys’ cock on his tongue, bumping into the roof of his mouth, the back of his throat. Weird, like the submission fantasies—he’s never switched with the same person.

That’s not fantasy, he reminds himself, listening to Rhys’ erratic, loud breathing, Rhys’ short moans, when he manages to grind on his fingers, pushing himself harder on his prostate; aching into them. Rhys must like riding. Katagawa stops sucking, relaxes, and removes the hand that holds down Rhys’ movements. Rhys startles the second he slips into his throat on another push back Katagawa’s fingers, a funny accident; the second Katagawa swallows, closing his eyes, throat stretched with him. 

His worried hand lands on Katagawa’s shoulder, hot and warm, and Katagawa thumbs on his thigh a few times. _Fuck my mouth._

Rhys doesn’t move, frozen between Katagawa’s lips and his hand. Katagawa huffs, sliding off his cock, catches leak of precome on his tongue. He’s going to taste him inside for a long time. Swallows, opens his eyes, and puts a hickey, large and reddening, on Rhys’ inner thigh. “No edging,” Rhys repeats hoarsely, gripping his shoulder tighter, grinding on his fingers harder, but, when Katagawa sucks his cockhead into his mouth, tongues the underside, gentle, soft, he stops moving again. Katagawa looks up at him and leans away again, lips near the wet slit. 

“I’m not edging you,” he murmurs quietly, lightheaded from seeing Rhys’ eyes darken, hearing his hitched inhale. He has a good idea of how he looks like that. He brushes his free hand up to Rhys’ nipples, his tensing stomach, his thighs and gives him a smile; takes the Rhys’ left hand from his shoulder, a circle around his wrist, and leads it to his hair. “Move, if you want to come.” 

He wraps his lips around Rhys around his cock again, teeth digging into the inner side of his lips — Rhys got harder; it wouldn’t be long until he comes — if he will _let go —_ and takes all of him in, throat loosening around the blunt pressure. Rhys doesn’t move; Katagawa swallows, swallows again, and again, barely moves his tongue, and opens his mouth, trying to exhale around Rhys’ cock, moving back just a bit, and feels Rhys’ clenching around his fingers, hard. 

_Come on, Rhys,_ he thinks, hazy, allowing himself to briefly focus on his own arousal as it drowns his mind in heated, wonderful pleasure. He’s so full. He’ll be sore, he’ll be running his tongue in his empty mouth, above the imprint of his teeth, missing the feeling of— Katagawa throbs in his pants and lets out a small sound and Rhys — Rhys must have read it as a plea, or people panting around his cock is what get him going, so he grips his hair, firm, and finally fucks inside with beautiful, fast thrusts, and Katagawa starts moving his fingers, too, aligning to his rhythm and barely coherent with raw want. He shivers with it, whines, hearable even with his mouth stuffed full. Rhys grips his hair tighter, and it stings so much that Katagawa almost loses it, spit leaking out of his lax mouth. When he makes another sound, on especially hard thrust, Rhys comes with a bitten off shout, and calmness washes over Katagawa’s mind, surrounded by Rhys’ pulse, his taste, his smell. 

That is what makes him get up. 

It’s a slow movement, Rhys’ hands are falling on the bed; he always feels a little dumb with satisfaction after rough oral. 

He finds Rhys’ gleaming eyes and relaxed face and licks his lips around a smile, but then Rhys opens his mouth, and Katagawa doesn’t think he can talk about anything right now, so he starts fingering him again, long, dragging movement at his tender insight. Watches Rhys’ squirm and sigh unhappily, whining “ _what, why,”_ pouting. So that’s fun. 

He rubs the spit from his face with a sheet, licks briefly on Rhys’ softening cock and adds more lube inside of him, getting four fingers instead of three, but Rhys yanks him up by his hair and Katagawa sees white for a second, getting up close to Rhys’ chest. Rhys is dishevelled, red cheeks and darkened hair, sticking to the skin, and bitten mouth. He looks so good. 

“Are you going to fuck me,” Rhys asks, and Katagawa laughs, quiet, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. Moving his fingers. Circling his rim with his thumb — it makes Rhys wiggle, sensitive. So sensitive. 

“I am fucking you,” Katagawa whispers, a cliche, enjoying him tightening and relaxing around him, even though stretch must be almost unbearable. He wants to look at his hole that must be red and swollen right now, but his is good too, fucked-out, lazy annoyance on Rhys’ face. Katagawa leans to tongue at his nipple. 

He wants to tease him so much, tease him more, he thinks, grazing the edge of his teeth over the nipple, sucks it in, hard, feeling Rhys’ re-adjust the grip on his hair. Tease him until he’s desperate, sobbing with it, wet and messy and delirious with arousal, from how much of it Katagawa can give him. 

He is being pulled up to Rhys’ lips, his scalp tingling, and Rhys’ ankles are locked on his lower back, a sudden pressure. Katagawa grins at him, as Rhys’ exhales into his half-opened mouth, going lax around his fingers, finding, probably, some resemblance of calm. Rhys brushes his neck, softly, over his Adam apple, over his cybernetic’s marks, and uses his legs to slide Katagawa’s pants down with his cactus-sock wearing feet. 

His hand moves to his shoulder, to his biceps. Both of them look down to notice a trail of precome breaking between Katagawa soaked pants and his dick.

He hears Rhys exhale again and meets his eyes, along with a curve of his expectant, exasperated eyebrow. He should have fed Rhys his own cum for this fucking smugness.

 _Well?_ Rhys mouths with a half-smile. His eyes are so bright. 

Katagawa gets down to suck few bites into his tattoo and gets his fingers out of him, hearing the mournful _oh._ He understands. He gets out of his pants and lines his cock to Rhys’ wet, puffy hole, and thinks if not for the — situation, — he would have teased him there, with just a feeling, an itch of pressure that’s barely there until Rhys begged to fill him up, but this is not the day. He just slides all the way in, mind going blank, except the tight, still tight heat on his cock, and greedy, whiskey-toned possessiveness that drowns his mind at the feeling of Rhys’ muscles yielding before him, taking him, keeping him so good that he feels himself leak all the way in. He feels delicious. He squirms, when Katagawa bottoms out, still looking at the easy way Rhys’ body’s taking his cock, tightening around him. It boils a molten heat in Katagawa’s stomach. 

He leans forward to kiss him, and feels Rhys’ cock throb against his abdomen, feels him tightening harder at the barest hint of sliding out. 

Katagawa feels frantic. He will surely go mad with this. 

Rhys’ eyelashes tremble when he kisses him, deep, unmovable, not letting him wiggle with the hand on his hip, not letting him take a breath with his mouth, listening to him keen in his throat, soft and weak until there’s a helpless wheeze. Until his blunt nails dig into Katagawa’s shoulders. 

His legs on Katagawa’s back twitch and press, urging him to move. There’s a patch of drool in the corner of his mouth, his chest rising heavily; a dark, ferocious thrill swirls through Katagawa’s body. He leans away with a sharp nip on Rhys’ lower lip and starts to fuck him, hard, gripping his hips with both hands. Rhys’ knees fall open and Katagawa presses on the insides of his thighs to spread him more, gets Rhys’ knees above his elbows and moves forward, gripping Rhys’ waist. Almost folding him in half. 

His thrusts would drag him above the sheets, if not for Katagawa’s holding him in place; in that position, with his heels bumping his shoulders, he can’t get leverage to press back, but he tries, he tries: he arches, and tenses his hips, and tries to move his ass. 

Rhys sweats, flushed, glassy eyes and lips dry from the pants. Katagawa didn’t think it’s possible to want a person when you’re already fucking them, but life is full of wonders: he turns his head to put a brief kiss on Rhys’ leg, just above his fucking sock, and sees his eyes widen, hears him moan, high-pitched and surprised, feels him throb around him. 

He fucks harder, and Rhys shivers on every thrust, his breathing shallows and the sounds Katagawa catches with his teeth are longer, more helpless and hot and fucked out. His grip relaxes around Rhys’ waist, and he leans down on one hand to stroke his side, gentle, his chest, neck and slope of his left shoulder. Rhys whines and gets his hands on Katagawa again, arching into his touch. Katagawa licks his neck, and kisses the wet path, gets higher, near his ear where his hair is black with sweat. Kisses there, too, and Rhys shudders under him. Around him. Katagawa fucks in faster and watches a close-up of Rhys’ half-lidded eyes, red cheeks, eats the sounds he makes, just touching Rhys’ lips with his; not kissing. 

When he gets another bruise near Rhys’ clavicle, and gets his hand low to stroke Rhys’ rim, stretched with his cock, Rhys groans and tightens around him so much that he needs to grip Rhys’ thigh to thrust into him again, forceful, to make more place for himself inside because it’s— 

“How does it feel, buddy?” he asks quietly, to interrupt the thought kissing his ear shell. Rhys — throbs at it, and god, but Katagawa can’t appreciate the hilariousness of it all, because that tight clench drives him crazy. He notices Rhys doesn’t try to move now — he just stays how Katagawa wants him to, how he places him. Katagawa’s hands stroke his thighs lightly. Katagawa thinks he hears panting _no edging._

“What did you say?” Katagawa asks, pulling out of him almost fully, leaving only tip inside, and — yeah, no edging. Sure. Rhys bites on his wrist and arches his spine as Katagawa doesn’t hold him down anymore, thrusts on his cock, trying to get more. His hole twitches. Katagawa smiles. 

“I said, make me come,” it’s quiet and low and wonderful, and Katagawa slides in and kisses him for it, swallowing his whines on every thrust — he deliberately misses all good angles, and Rhys bumps his palms on his shoulders. Rhys also says, “fuck.” Their eyes meet; Rhys looks feverish, and Katagawa kisses him again, gently, a contrast to the relentless pace of his hips, “make me come.” 

“Answer me and I will,” Katagawa smiles, licking his lips, folding the free palm around Rhys’ cock to convey the sincerity of his statement. In all honesty, he’s sure Rhys can come untouched—and maybe he will, but— 

“Feels okay,” Rhys whines, low, as soon as Katagawa presses his cock to his prostate; his fingers are wet with Rhys’ precome, “ah, come on, feels good, p—” 

Katagawa gets his hand from his cock to grip Rhys’ ass, puts another one on his neck, and lifts him towards himself, letting Rhys slide down on his cock—in his lap, and Rhys almost mewls from the change in angle, at Katagawa’s hands kneading the soft skin of his ass with wet palm. He manages to thrust up two or three times, and Rhys comes, biting into his neck, hard cock bouncing at Katagawa’s stomach. It’s— explosive, almost comically, and Katagawa’s last coherent thought is that he’ll probably be embarrassed about getting his cum into Katagawa’s eye — not a critical thing, and he tries to rub it away at Rhys’ shoulder, and he does, it doesn’t even itch, and then it gets to him. 

Rhys’ orgasm from the inside. His hot, quick, loud breathing, his heartbeats — everywhere, around Katagawa’s cock, in Katagawa’s ears — or is it his heart, there? he can’t tell — and closeness, the worst of it, the closeness, feeling his mind with blinding, bone-deep desire — intimacy seeking. He would tell himself it’s not that, because it’s not, there’s no truth in it, but he trembles from the feeling, Rhys clenches around him in forceful, overwhelming muscle ripples that should get weaker but don’t, for some impossible reason. No fuck in the world could prepare him for it. 

Katagawa closes his eyes and tries to calm himself, waiting for Rhys to come down, breathes evenly as a counterpoint to Rhys’ erratic pulse. Rhys rests his cheek on the place he’s bitten when he came, and that thought only makes him shiver harder and he tries not to grip Rhys’ skin, tries to just hold him, like partners after sex would. In his lap. Gods. 

“What about you?” Rhys asks, quiet, mouth brushing on Katagawa’s wet, sweaty neck. Katagawa’s cock swells, and Rhys tightens around him harder. He hopes he won’t speak again; he wants to take Rhys off and get into a cold shower, but Rhys doesn’t care what he thinks he wants. “Katagawa. Do you feel good?” 

“Yes,” he replies, low, wanting it to stop. Replies, because it’s a reassurance he needs to produce, because otherwise Rhys’ might drop, and he doesn’t want it, but Rhys, of course, chooses to shift on his cock, oversensitive, soft, hot — Katagawa swallows and rubs his waist gently to calm himself. The noose is back on his neck, but arousal doesn’t go, nothing of it — goes, and he says, “It’s good. You’re amazing.” 

“Tell me,” Rhys asks, pleased, his voice more confident, but still quiet, muffled with Katagawa’s skin in front of his lips and exhaustion. He shifts on Katagawa’s cock again, clenches, this time very purposefully — yes, of course, he likes riding, and Katagawa grips his shoulders. He leaks so much it would probably look like he _did_ come inside. _Fuck._

“Rhys,” he says with a pained moan. 

“Hey,” Rhys says and moves his hips, a slow, careful slide, redistributed heat that feels so good Katagawa wants to scream. He mouths at Rhys’ shoulder, unable to even bare his teeth. “Tell me.” 

“Rhys,” he repeats, a plea bargain. _Fuck._

“It would be great—” Rhys starts, continuing his little movements. The blood roars in Katagawa’s ears, his cock, and it would be so easy, so wonderfully easy — to — to — Rhys continues, “—to see you come.” 

_“Rhys,"_ Katagawa mutters, not knowing how to tell him, not knowing what to do: he can’t move, can’t even breathe properly, his body responds to Rhys’ voice and Rhys’ closeness like it’s— it hurts to think like what, but it makes his core burn, _he shouldn’t,_ and he finally lets out what he hopes to be a universal, “yellow. Red. _Red_. Please.” 

There are few beats of silence and then Rhys slides off him in a bit sloppy movement and sits on the bed beside him. Katagawa hopes he won’t drop, trying to feel something else about it. He’s still hard. He wonders if Rhys would leave. 

“Hey,” Rhys calls from the side. Katagawa looks at him: he turned the dark blue sheet around himself like a robe. It looks good on him. Katagawa glances away from the bites on his neck. “Thanks for telling me.” Katagawa shrugs and looks at him again. “Are you okay?” 

Katagawa waves his hand weakly, trying to find a single patronizing note in his voice. There’s none. Rhys sounds… sad. 

“I will be,” he replies roughly, biting away the apology. In general, people don’t apologize for safewording. He looks at Rhys’ face, focusing on the paleness of the blue lense. Maybe it’s malfunctioning. 

“Alright,” Rhys says with a sad smile and then yawns and pulls him down on the bed. The sheets are not as dirty as he’s expected, and Rhys lies on the absolutely clean part of the bed. “Let’s sleep.”

Katagawa supposes they can sleep. 

*

Or so he thought. He wakes up at 0430 and, in the shower, tries to remember the last time he’s safeworded.

He feels stupid, which is, like, an underlying thought for the last month, but it’s fine. Safewords bring people closer, right? Right? He drinks painkillers and leaves for a run, trying not to look at Rhys, tucked in the sheets, snuggling into Katagawa’s pillow; he turns the heating up before closing the door. 

The encrypted call catches him in the gym and his breath is a bit laboured when he picks up and leaves the place. “Wait a second,” he says, collecting his things. 

“No need for you to talk yet,” Tatsuke’s voice says; Katagawa blinks in surprise— she usually uses the family channel, and he’s excepted— well. She still sounds tired. He should ask what happened. “Just a few news. First, all keys we’ve collected are fake.” 

Katagawa hums in agreement, picks up his bag, and leaves the gym.

“Good news is that— apparently, you ought to know your second target. It’s— We have a reason to believe that Handsome Jack’s AI—that overtook systems’ control on Helios, remember? — is in young Atlas’ hands. You need to bring it home.” 

He stops before the old-Earth grocery shop and slips into a small gap between this building and the gym.

“How do we know,” he asks quietly, switching to Japanese. Handsome Jack’s AI was a creation of professor Nakayama, who was a shit naturalist, but apparently had enough brain and tech knowledge to convince Handsome Jack to let him snatch digital version of him through a special Instant Travel construction. To preserve, as it is to say, his handsomeness. 

While Tatsuke’s silent and there’s the sound of the workstation buzzing on her side, he rubs his forehead. What the fuck. 

“We just—do?” Tatsuke answers vaguely. 

“Sister,” Katagawa says. Surely she knows better than presenting him with _this_ argument. “I can understand the Key reasoning: this person opened the Vault; they should have a key and we can use it even if it’s discharged. I don’t understand the reasoning behind the second objective. The station has been destroyed because of it. Why are you sure this person preserved the reason why it’s been destroyed?” 

Tatsuke sighs. “We created a fake _wanted_ campaign, targeted mainly Atlas and former Hyperion employees—well, those who aren’t hiding. Told that AI hasn’t been destroyed and that whoever finds it will get a reward. Young Atlas… frequented the Machine Learning facility you’ve put in the list after the launch of the campaign—one. Two: campaign had an unexpected outreach beyond the target audience. It’s an executive order, so you understand father’s reasoning beyond getting the AI, but some people thought it’s a vigilante thing, so they’ve told us a few things about young— young Atlas.” 

“What, he was Hyperion’s fan when he was little?” Katagawa snorts. Most of Katagawa’s university acquaintances have been there; he can imagine what has been happening three years before another Vault has made Jack mad. Legends. 

“What’s with the tone?” Tatsuke asks, tired, with an unexpected, unfamiliar edge to her voice. “I’m just answering your question, Junior.” She takes a breath in the place where Katagawa should say sorry instead of wincing at the name — she’s never called him that — and continues; her tone trembles, just a bit. Katagawa wonders when was the last time she slept properly. “Former Hyperion people who contacted describe Atlas as a calculating, ruthless person, and the outcomes of your previous operation confirm this; it makes sense for him to preserve AI to use it in the future. Along with his increasing repetitive movements to the ML facility from your list of his treasure hiding places— well. It’s likely we’re right.” 

“Is there any…” Katagawa bites on his lip, swallowing _hard evidence,_ “is there anything else I need to know?” 

“Well, if you’ll find it, it would be heavily protected. The man knows his cryptography, some of the chips we’ve snatched during the intervention is still being cracked, so— it’s better to have conclusive proof _it is_ Handsome Jack, so we— yeah. So we wouldn’t waste time with Amara.” She takes a deep breath. They want to use AI as an instruction guide on opening the Vault. Unbelievable. “We’re 94% sure it’s there, little brother. A low-key manager couldn’t have built Atlas alone.” 

_Handsome Jack has been a low-key manager,_ Katagawa thinks, and then he thinks _Rhys hasn’t been alone, aren’t you watching the news,_ and then he thinks _what. What._ Is that a joke? He shakes his head, feeling truly, deeply, disturbingly surprised by that stupidity. He realizes their ML operation has probably been a signal for Rhys to install his multiple fakes construction and he leans on the wall, closing his eyes in attempts to stifle cold anger. _Why didn’t you tell me,_ he wants to ask, but there are more important questions. 

“I’ll do my best,” Katagawa says. “How’s Yuko-san?” 

“Wha— huh. They’re fine, they’re fine. Getting better, hm. Isaako’s all over the place with worry though, but,” Tatsuke’s breath is a bit rugged. Katagawa imagines her biting her lower lip. “but everything will be fine, if—” 

“If what?” 

He wants to ask why she uses a separate encrypted channel, instead of a family operator, but it seems like a wrong time. “No ifs, sorry,” Tatsuke lets out a laugh. “I’m just— tired. That’s— pretty much the report.” 

“I miss you,” Katagawa tells her, and a beat later realizes how weird he sounds, “I miss Naoko more, but I miss you, too.” 

“Hah, what,” Tatsuke laughs, and there’s a sad underline to her voice, “I didn’t hear you— hm. Naoko-chan is— yeah. Listen, I really need to go. Take care, okay? And find AI, it’s really important for you to find it, you understand? As soon as possible. Bye.” 

The line drops silent. Katagawa thumbs on the earbud, looking at his comm. Naoko doesn’t answer. 

She cares about maintaining his cover but doesn’t care about picking up his calls.

Family. There's an unread message from Troy Calypso, but Katagawa can’t spare a piece of his mind on the footage of Troy playing dating games, so he leaves it for later. 

*

When Rhys walks out of his long shower, Katagawa sits at the counter and drinks yesterday’s cold tea he made to calm himself. He reads through papers from a bundle of startups, reporting about 70% completion of terraformation in the fifth dedicated district on Pandora. 

“Is that breakfast?” Rhys asks, coming to the counter. He wears Katagawa’s t-shirt that is _slightly_ bigger than he is, a simple dark grey colour, simple lines, and Katagawa’s torn between an angry and unfair swirl about his boundaries and dull and quiet ache in his chest. This isn’t appropriate by any of the standards he has established to live a functioning life. 

“You don’t do breakfasts,” Katagawa replies. “It’s coffee. And ice cream.” 

Rhys sits on the chair opposite of him. Katagawa continues to read the report, decisively not thinking about anything that’s happening around him. 

“Did you make it?” Rhys asks, apparently either out of his mind or thinking Katagawa’s suddenly decided to poison him. He wouldn’t blame him at this point. 

“It’s impossible to find proper mint on this delightful ball of sunset, so no, not ice cream,” Katagawa answers. Perhaps cold tea was not a good idea. Perhaps he needs coffee, too. He hears Rhys open the package and dug the spoon in. He hears him swallow. Then, he doesn’t hear anything because he reads the report. Fantastic. Coffee. He pours himself a portion in the clean mug and briefly glances at Rhys. Rhys holds the spoon with ice cream above the steaming cup. “Please, don’t put it in perfectly good coffee. It hurts to look.” 

“You’re not looking,” Rhys raises his eyebrow and, bless his kind and merciful nature, complies. Katagawa goes back to report, but no, Rhys keeps speaking because his nature is actually _not_ kind and merciful. “I think it’s the most terrifying move I’ve ever seen you pull out.” 

“I kinda hoped you’ll freak out and run away,” Katagawa says into his coffee. 

“I thought you thought I was into creepy,” Rhys answers lightly. Katagawa squints at him, creepily. Rhys laughs, not unkindly, and sips his coffee. He always feels better after coffee in the mornings, Katagawa knows, and it’s happening now, too, - seems like sunlight stays longer on his skin. His thoroughly bruised skin. Katagawa lets out a small sigh in his cup. He hopes the cup understands. “You know, I also heard there are people who have, like, chill sex.” 

Here we go. 

“Are you going to give me feedback.”

“I worry,” Rhys says thoughtfully, “that you don’t give yourself a break even there.” 

“I will bring it up in the session with my imaginary therapist.” 

“You know, we do have therapy—” 

“Rhys.” 

“You’re going from, like, zero to eleven in parsecs,” Rhys keeps going, dipping the spoon in the frozen green of the ice cream, “no middle ground. No breaks,” Katagawa is fairly certain what Rhys implies under the breaks, and he snickers. “Like, it’s.. It’s like. Edging or overstimulation. No third option.” 

Oh, but he can’t let it slide—even though he knows Rhys uses it as a metaphor. “You came _twice_ . It’s not over-anything, by any _stretch_ . It’s barely _there_.”

Rhys clears his throat. “Okay, then let’s look at the other part of the equation.” 

“There’s no first part,” Katagawa says. “I’m gay, get off with your math from me.”

“You're a chemist,” Rhys points out. “People have never safeworded while fucking me. So, it’s all quite new.” 

“Very direct of you to actually verbalize it,” Katagawa comments, deliberately cruel. 

Rhys rolls his eyes. Katagawa wants to slap him. Or himself. “Well, someone has to be direct, because apparently, you think having an honest conversation makes you _easy_ or something.”

“I know I’m easy. I’m the one with a crush. I brought you ice cream. Why are we talking about honest things, if you’re supposed to flee screaming on the first sight of causal? Did people _lie_ to me?”

“Is that what you want? For me to run away?” Rhys asks, sending another spoon with ice cream in his mouth. _Ideally,_ Katagawa thinks and groans, apparently making Rhys laugh. He’s such a pain in the ass. Katagawa hates him. He changed his mind, he doesn’t want to be seen in the slightest. Fuck being seen. 

“You’re right,” Katagawa replies. “I suck in honesty. I safeworded because I got scared of being vulnerable. Satisfied?” 

“That’s why you don’t— come. Is that a general approach? Or—” Katagawa raises his eyebrow at him. Rhys sighs in understanding. “Ah. I’m the only one you don’t trust with your— pleasure. Right?” 

“Apart from the fact this is, like, the cheesiest line in the six systems, your conclusions need a bit of adjustment,” Katagawa says. That conclusion is about the only predictable thing about Rhys lately. 

“Adjust them for me,” Rhys says sweetly; Katagawa hopes he’s not dripping poison in the ice cream. 

“You’re the only person who makes me feel vulnerable,” Katagawa says bluntly, an almost-hundred-percent truth, and sips his coffee, thinking: that will shut you up. He lifts his head from the report he doesn’t read and looks at Rhys blinking at him disbelievingly. Right. Katagawa smiles at him. “Anyway, I just don’t want to cry during sex. I mean, it’s okay when other people are doing that, but my ego wouldn’t survive the blow. My well-being depends on the ability to be the person I think I am, and this, that’s not m—”

“I’m sure you’ll look nice anyway,” Rhys interrupts with an answering smile. Katagawa goes back to the report. 

The dedicated zone for Node-5 is in the place of Helios crash. A weird place for terraforming, but people are, for some reason, fond of doing something nice with ruins. He remembers seeing Rhys there. Was nice, actually. Nice to not talk. 

Helios died from power shutdown, initiated by Rhys. A year and a half, he thinks, passed between the moments he first saw him and Anemoi. He remembers Rhys laying on the Catch-a-Ride’s roof, stargazing, the left eye a gold hole on his pale face. Was it gold then, when he has been standing among the ruins of Helios? Katagawa remembers it gold, but— the power shut down, thrown away cybernetic hand—

Coffee burns his throat. It’s almost-perfect-temperature coffee. It's a very ill-timed realization. The only reason Rhys would have thrown away his hand is that there was an intrusion. After power shut down, Jack, apparently, still has been in his head, and he should have torn the ECHO away— he needs to rewatch his footage. 

_Frequented the facility… “Oh. I’m an idiot.”_

“Katagawa,” Rhys calls. 

“Hm,” Katagawa answers, digging his teeth in the lower lip. Tatsuke’s habit, not his. He always liked picking up other people’s habits when he was a child. That didn't end well. 

“Do you have more coffee?” Rhys asks, and then, quickly, quietly, “What happened?” 

Katagawa looks at him and gives him a careful smile. He’s acutely aware his place is bugged with listening devices. Tatsuke used an encrypted channel. “It’s my sister.” 

“Naoko, right? Is she okay?” 

“I hope she is, yeah,” Katagawa says, looking at his cup. “Have you ever thought that— someone was totally wrong about something? Like, completely incorrect on every possible account, stupid, etcetera. And then it occurs they _were_ right about one thing. Just one And it is mind-blowing. You can’t believe it. This is absurd. One little detail makes you doubt the whole thing and you end up thinking maybe, maybe your whole mindset around this something is wrong. Maybe you’re crazy,” he looks at Rhys and briefly smiles, “I mean. More than usual.” 

“I have it, like, every day.” Rhys’ face is a bit pained, apologetic. “Comes with a position.” 

“Yeah,” Katagawa says. “My sister, she was right about something. I’m in… a bit of surprise. Not that she can’t be right, no, it’s just— “

“Yeah,” Rhys says and pours himself more coffee by himself. It’s nice to see him do that. “I understand.” 

_Do you,_ Katagawa thinks, looking at his morning-woken-up-face, messed up hair and sparkling metal of his cybernetic, at the circle on his temple, at his dark lips and bruises on his shoulders and neck, at his coloured eyes, the warm brown and the pale blue that has been switching to cyan blue and back since— yeah. 

_A low-key manager couldn’t have built Atlas alone_ , Katagawa thinks, but it doesn’t make sense. The AI is reported to be a close-to-perfect copy of Jack, and Atlas is nothing like Hyperion. Atlas conquers gently if he does, a long game of being nice, it’s— 

It’s a debate. Whatever the outcomes, even if Rhys _is_ insincere with his intentions and free markets—which Katagawa finds highly doubtful—the methods he uses to get dominance are polar to Jack’s: he disproves Jack’s approach on every step of Atlas' growth. He plays defense, Jack doesn’t, Jack is his—

Rhys swallows his coffee in one go and stands up, walking around the table. When he’s near Katagawa, he’s higher, so he needs to bow his head to kiss him, hard and heavy, his palm steady on Katagawa’s cheekbone. Katagawa can barely breathe. 

—litmus test. 

When they part, Rhys says, smiling. “Thanks for the ice cream.” He goes to change and comes back, jeans and Katagawa’s t-shirt, his own shirt on his shoulders. 

That’s a terrible style, Katagawa thinks miserable, head swirling with seeing this and with a rush of discovery. That’s a robbery. 

Rhys goes closer and kisses him again, saying, “you’re not casual, but I’ve gotta run.” 

Katagawa bites him for that, making a sound he can’t give an attribute to even for himself. He feels like he ran a double marathon and didn’t notice the finish line. 

Rhys laughs when he leaves.

Katagawa sits there for another ten minutes and then continues reading the report, but all of it melts into a fucking mess because: holy shit, Rhys has Handsome Jack in his head, and Handsome Jack is this guy he listens to figure out places not to go. 

Handsome Jack probably tried to strangle him. 

Handsome Jack, which is in Rhys’ head, is his second objective. 

Katagawa giggles, struggling to call these thoughts assumptions. 

_You saved him, didn’t you?_ Katagawa thinks, looking at his half empty cup. _When Maliwan attacked, you put him into your head to save him._

This is what he needs to take. This, and he can go back and continue feeling nothing. He can do this.

His heart throbs between his ribs. 

Perhaps it’s a good time to look at that message from Troy. He could use a distraction. 

He plays the video in his earbuds and freezes, laughter stuck in his throat like a fishbone. 

___________

**3M2877, Planet M — Maliwan Headquarters**

“I don’t know why you are still so surprised, Naoko-chan,” her father says, finishing another cup of his wine. “I told you what I’m planning to do, and he accomplished nothing to change my mind. It is how it is.” 

Naoko looks at him, boiling with hate. Sana sighs in her place by his left hand. “Listen, little sister, I am sorry. I truly am. But it’s decided. You can watch or you can—“ 

“You don’t understand,” Naoko hisses, “Father, I’m begging you, let’s think about another way. Talk to him. What’s the point of _we are together_ talk if we’re not, eventually, together when it matters? He doesn’t even _know_.” 

“Again: he made his choice,” her father rubs his forehead and Naoko’s insides squeeze in a metal hold; her brother’s old gesture; he tried getting rid of it when she pointed out the resemblance, but it worked badly. “If you’re going to be difficult, I’ll send you to provide Yuko and Tatsuke-chan with some company.” 

“He liked the boy,” she tells him, quiet, cringing internally at the effort spent at not raising to the bait. “Don’t you know what it’s like to like someone and forget about everything else?” 

“I do know what it’s like, Naoko,” he takes a bottle of wine and shares the leftovers between his cup and Sana’s. “But I never weighed it against Maliwan.” 

“He didn’t—“ 

“Subconsciously, he did. He’s of no use for us like that.” 

“He can be,” Naoko states, and her father smiles at her gently. Splitting the difference; her father taught negotiation to all of them. 

“We’ll see about that. For now, we stick to the plan and—“ 

“Father, he picked up a cloaked Maliwan FS-38 shuttle that has been placed on the south side of Atlas’ compound,” Sana murmurs. “I’m sorry, Naoko-chan, but it’s already done.” 

“Right,” Naoko replies, trying not to grit her teeth. “I understand.” 

_We’ll see about that._

*

She scrolls through the things Tetsu sent from his undercover, and there it is: the Viper Drive. Takeshi, who’s been the only one apart from her and Yuko who’s actually paid attention to Tetsu’s reports, said it’s a masterpiece in remote hacking. 

Tetsu can’t be in hyperspace yet, the flying system is online. 

All of Atlas’ tech UI reminds her of a sniper rifle. A masterpiece, huh. 

“Let’s see what else you can do, Rhys Strongfork,” she murmurs, clicking _Activate_. 

The violet viper on the screen hisses and Naoko huffs: _men_. It takes a few seconds to connect to the shuttle’s inside and outside cameras. 

She breathes out. 

_It worked._

Tetsu sits in the pilot chair and there's a string of bruises on his neck: did someone strangle him? There was a period of cameras turning off in his room, hours after the attack. What _are_ they doing, for goodness' sake? 

He looks tired - one would look tired after such a night. She wants to tease, wants to joke around her brother’s personal life, like _he_ used to do — she’s never had a chance, Tetsu always had such fleeting connections, but he frowns after the first taste of shuttle’s coffee, and it’s so familiar, his snobbish faces, his obsession with clear taste — what the fuck is that — his nerdiness over everything that includes even smallest bits of chemistry (which comprises, like, everything) and it hurts so much. 

She curls into a ball in her workstation chair and sobs. _Dammit_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's talk more about content warnings. 
> 
> 1) all explosions happen during Maliwan’s attack; they use gas explosions to activate Atals’ system emergency protocol and then they just— explode things. 
> 
> 2) Katagawa has a panic attack right after the line _“Jenna,” he murmurs, looking at two figures, Rhys and Gabi, separated from the people flow, talking with their heads close. “When did Rhys come back?”_   
> If detailed descriptions of PAs trigger or upset you, skip right to _“He dreams about the evening he’s found out his mother left”_. Rhys grounds him to mitigate the PA, but he faints anyway.
> 
> 3) Katagawa safewords because he doesn’t wanna come. they didn’t negotiate safewords, but Rhys understands him anyway and they stop and they fine, but: if that triggers/upsets you, skip from _“Rhys’ orgasm from the inside”_ to _“Or so he thought.”_
> 
> if you want to know more about any of these, ask me in the comments or here: https://twitter.com/mrskinseyfour
> 
> * 
> 
> tell me what you think! and: i don't know when the next chapter will be edited, but prepare to carefully read content warnings. things are going to be tough there. take care!


End file.
